Yuna showing Ilya photos of little baby Shane and they get to a photo of a naked two year old Shane grinning at the camera, shirt held up in his triumphant chubby fist. Yuna smiles and tells him how hard it was to keep clothes on Shane and that he’d rip them off whenever they weren’t looking. Without thinking Ilya says “so not much has changed, huh?” and then freezes because he can’t believe he just said that in front of his boyfriend’s mom until Yuna laughs so hard she spills her wine.
I know I’ve mentioned Sema before, but I’ve never written about her.
Title comes from the lyrics to Love Like Ghosts by Lord Huron.
Characters: Drifter (Marlow), Sema (OC)
Warnings: Death, attempted murder, killing in self-defense
Spoilers for the New War.
Dry grass crackled underfoot as she moved over the hard-packed earth. There must've been a severe drought in her absence, to leave the bleak scrubland somehow even more desolate, the sparse grass snapping like dry twigs, and she swore the earth was cracked in places where there was no grass at all. Even the rare shrubs were bare of leaves, struggling in the arid clime.
She stopped as she reached the crest of the hill, breath catching in her throat.
She could still make out the remains of their hideout in the shallow valley, assembled from scrap snagged from the Zariman or pilfered in secret under the noses of the powerful magnates.
It'd been rough, but it had been home for years.
What had been a cleverly hidden structure was now mostly collapsed into shambles and scrap, windswept and scattered.
The small garden of food and herbs she had spent every free moment tending to had clearly broken its rows at some point, but now all that remained were withered, barren stalks.
The rack they had spent hours working to build so they could smoke meat and fish was also collapsed, the wood dried and rotted under the intense sun.
She lifted her head, gaze tearing away from the shambles of her ramshackle life to the crest of the hill, to the jutting stone with burn marks marring its face.
She licked her lips and swallowed thickly, trying to ignore the lump in her throat as she turned to pass the rubble and climb the hill.
There, before the stone, she slowly knelt and reached out to run her fingers over the scorched engraving she'd etched into the store.
"…hello, Sema," she breathed. "I'm back."
Of course, there was no answer. She knew there wouldn't be.
"You wouldn't believe where I've been," she went on anyway. "I wish you could've come with me. Or… maybe not. It would've upset you. I think you finally would've picked up a gun then, if you'd seen it. Some Orokin bastard made himself king, but it was worse than what we left. He was… controlling the thoughts of... of everyone."
She dropped her hands, shifting so she was sitting cross-legged in front of the grave, then laid her wrists over her knees.
The wind howled, and her lungs burned at the sand and grass-dust it carried, making her cough and choke.
She sighed, leaning forward and resting her forehead against the cool stone. Her eyes closed. "…Void, I would've loved to see you anyways. The color of your hair, your eyes—your freckles. I never told you I didn't like freckles, but you? You always looked like stars to me. I could spend forever drawing constellations on you."
Another cough wracked her body, and she finally brought up the loose fabric from her cowl, covering her mouth, but the burning never eased. Instead, she choked again, and it turned into a wrenching sob as the dam finally splintered and broke.
"I miss you," she sobbed. "I miss you I miss you I miss you—Void, I want you back so much!"
The wind's howling rose to a tumultuous roar, almost drowning out the sound of her own voice in her ears.
"I'm sorry," she whispered anyways. "I'm so, so sorry, Sema. I—I should've done better. I…"
There was a dust storm coming. She could see it blocking out the bleak gray light of Duviri, rising in her peripherals, an ominous blur through her tears.
She didn't move.
"…I still can't figure out why you attacked me," she rasped. "Was it the plants dying? Did the Void get to you like it did our parents? Or was it something else I did?"
She flinched suddenly, memories swirling through her mind.
Jerking awake in the night at the sound of something moving in their home that shouldn't have been, reaching for the knife she kept under her pillow, rolling, pain before she had ever turned completely, blooming through the back of her skull like a lightning bolt rolling across the sky, and she lashed out in retaliation—
Sema's pained cry as hot blood ran down her fingers.
She hadn't even had time to react before Sema had staggered away from her, dropping her makeshift weapon and ripping the knife from where she had left it driven into her thigh.
"You shouldn't have taken the knife out," she whispered to the stone, voice cracking all over again. Hot tears ran down her cheeks, leaving streaks in the dust that had already begun to cling to her. "Void, I loved you. I love you. I'm so sorry, Sema. Where did I go wrong?"
The dust storm hit with a roar, and she tugged the hood of her garb up properly, her voice drowned out in the howling of the wind and the rushing and crackling of dust and sand snapping around her.
