Beyond The River

DEATH & DEMISE

Leala's pov:-

I sit up and feel everything around me. It's just so different and the same as before, everything looks the same as it had from the borders of Casmere and from my dreams and memories, but something just feels different about my surrounding.

It's like I can feel every single leaf rustling in the phantom wind, hear the chirp of every bird, the churn of soil as Kirigan takes a step back and stares at me wide eyed, his mouth hanging open.

All I see, even as I look at him now, is his face, broken and agonised, as Hensley and I walk away from mother's dead body.

A gasp sounds from behind me, a raspy and ragged sound that drags on in the sudden silence of the forest. I turn around and see Hensley looking at me as if I'm a ghost. I probably am for all that it matters.

But all I see is him looking at me standing over my mother's grave, and feeling horrified by me.

I suddenly feel sick.

I turn away from him, not quite able to meet his eyes, and look around myself.

Louis is there, fallen over as if he simply fell asleep, and all around him, his army was lying down.

And just like that I was back at the battle ground, my father dead and my army kneeling in front of him. Defeated.

I turn just in time to face the bushes and vomit on them.

I feel sturdy, gentle hands on me, hands that had held me through many nights when I couldn't or wouldn't fall asleep, hands that had chased me around the gardens as I ran giggling, hands that had taught me how to hold a sword properly, hands that had taught me how to kill without any weapon, hands that had wiped countless tears from my face, hands that I had always fallen into whenever I couldn't face the world.

I turn around and see the face of the man who had my memory wiped.

Tears well up in my eyes as I look into the face of the person whom I used to trust blindly, without question and don't find him there anymore. As if this man, this Drystan Hensley, was a completely different person from the one whom I considered my father. 

Because that was exactly what I had done, I had placed him as my father. And now I was to go through the pain of losing my father all over again.

And I wondered what he sees when he looks at me? A terrifying creature? A fallen princess? a broken girl?  a failed soldier? or his daughter?

And then it came to me, the thought so terrifying in it's emptiness that I couldn't think loud even in my mind.

What if to him I was nothing but just a responsibility? A burden?

And then as he says my name, whispers it as if it's a sacred prayer, something that had been crippled long, long ago, breaks.

I break into his arms. Into the arms that had held me when my own father hadn't.

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Hensley's POV:-

She opens her eyes and looks around herself, then at Alex and then at me, but doesn't quite meet my eyes and then looks at Mortimer and his fallen army, and then pukes into the bushes.

I rub her back, as I had done countless times when during the initial years of her nightmares she'd throw up almost every night after her terrible dreams. 

She finally turns towards me fully, looking me right in my eyes, and blinks as if she's seeing me for the first time, and the realisation of what had just happened hits me finally. That she was brought back from dead, and I didn't know if that had somehow altered her brain, does she even know me? Does she remember anything at all?