hi friends! this valkyrie chapter is kicking my ass, it is long and heavy and i have no time with school and everything rn BUT as a cookie for your patience, here is a snippet (that is happy, ish?). please enjoy! (and if you haven't already, check out valkyrie on ao3! i promise you it will be worth it. hopefully updating soon?) <3
Clara’s hand gently traces the plumage of the tawny owl, grinning a little as the feathers tickle the inside of her palm. There’s a giddiness to her expression that Hestia hasn’t seen in a long time, though like all else, it’s weighed down. The Clara she knows today is different from the little girl of her youth; there’s a wariness to her now, a gnawing anxiety living in the hollows of her cheeks these days. Of course, she knew Jude Vance, if only just because of Casey and Emmeline. He represents something nobody wants to think about: the children are vulnerable too, even when they are supposedly safe.
Hestia’s glad she’s an adult now, if only barely. Trying to imagine wrapping her head around this war at sixteen, seventeen… it’s inconceivable. It hurts her heart so terribly, every moment of every day, knowing people are fucking dying all the time. If that was how she saw the world when she was a kid, she wouldn’t be able to recover.
And Clara is so tender, so gentle and full of life, but she’s stronger than Hestia, more resilient. When they were kids, and Clara tripped and fell on the pavement, she’d get back up, her scraped knee bleeding but steel in her spine, like she knew the world would keep trying to push her down and she wouldn’t let it. She has never let it. She inherited Dad's gentleness and empathy, but also his unwillingness to yield. "My stubborn little firefly," Mum calls her. In Clara, perhaps, Richard Jones lives on.
Hestia’s heart is a plum, easily crushed in the palm of a hand. Her grieving anger is all bark, no bite. Even if it came down to it, she wouldn’t claw and fight to survive, she just can’t. she’s a coward. Dad was no coward. His bravery was just quiet sometimes, but always there. He was a good man.
Hestia wants to live up to him, but every time she falls short.
“How do we look together?” Clara poses, the owl perched lightly on the crook of her arm, sticking out her tongue between her teeth. Hestia draws her attention back to the present moment. There’s a keenness in both Clara and the owl’s eyes, a matching spirit linking them together.
“Perfect.” Hestia responds, reaching out her hand to the owl, who stares at it blankly then turns its head away. There's a sting in her chest. “Yikes. Not a fan of me, I guess.”
“She’s just shy.” Clara seems utterly enamoured with the bird, unable to draw her eyes away from it. “Gookooko’oo,” she breathes, and the owl extends her wings to give a flap.
Oh, Dad would be so proud of her if he were here now.