Work Text:
The Ghost of Hallownest’s skull sits cracked in two in the center of the temple.
She knows this is how it has to end. This is no surprise. But still Hornet, Princess of Hallownest, stands still and dumb, processing.
The old light is dead. There is no more infection. All because one vessel - a discard, mewling refuse - stepped up to the occasion.
Hornet cannot tell how many days she wanders, disoriented and lost in a kingdom she knows by heart. The part of her that screams says, the Radiance is dead. Hallownest no more needs a protector. You are free. The part of her that reasons says, how is this freedom such a great burden? There is nothing to protect, no one who cares for you, nothing outside of what is now. As the Wyrm said: There is no land beyond Hallownest. You have nothing. The part of her that keeps her alive says do not wallow, do not be weak. Get back on your feet. On the road. You will survive.
The body moves. Her head swims. She keeps going.
Hornet does not know where her feet are taking her, but where she is going hardly matters, only that she goes. She stumbles; rests are frequent. Going is better than doing nothing; it keeps her afloat. But everywhere she goes, her mind echoes. Memories layer themselves over perception, weaving, juxtaposed over reality. Seeing the present resounds in the past. A lumafly lantern is one in the White Palace, a long, blinding corridor so silent her voice feels too loud in her head. A paved road is overlaid with one in Deepnest, the day she left her mother. So many burdens she feels as though she lives two lives at once.
The vessel in Greenpath has gathered a thin layer of dust. Not even the littlest bugs want to make a home out of its shell; too empty. Too lonely.
It is missing its outer cloak. The little ghost must have taken it. No sense in letting the dead keep what they don’t need, she supposes. What’s left of their cloak jostles when she drifts her hand over it, dust glittering in the air for a moment - oh, only a moment. In their chest, their nail is still
embedded, deep enough that she’s sure the nail punctured them through the other side, pinning the little thing to the wall. Void drips from the wound. A pastiche of blood in black.
The vessel reaches out, and Hornet both comes to and is abstracted from her senses. She realizes how long she has just been standing, staring, watching the little thing suffer and die in front of her. She feels no sorrow; it is only a weakling. Mewling refuse. It wasn't truly hollow, so it was bound to fail. There is no need to grieve or regret. And yet, without thinking, she closes the gap between them. Her fingers find the little vessel’s. Their hands are cold, and small, and shake inside of hers. Void oozes down their body, and when she meets their face, void drips from their sockets, too.
In their eyes, the dim glow of infection peers back at her.
This was a mercy.
The little vessel shudders and shakes some more. They will not survive a wound like that. They don’t have much longer now. Hornet cannot bring herself to do anything as it squeezes its hands around her fingers. A child’s handhold; a silent plea. How did it muster up the strength?
She stays but
her mama didn’t, not for long.
“Ah, dear, how nice of you to return to us!” The Midwife slithered her way out of the wall, her grinning mask as unfeeling as always. “I know what happened to your mother, the Beast. I’m terribly sorry. Her devout are inconsolable, understandably. Losing one’s god isn’t easy on anyone.” Hornet stares at her, emptily. “I believe another god left us, too. Do you feel the air? It’s clean. The eyes and minds of our denizens are clear once more. Are you all right, dear? Let me close. I promise I won’t let my appetite get the better of me.”
Hornet bows her head. Closes her eyes. Breathes deep. Exhales.
She curtsies, and hopes the Midwife will understand. That she is the tower crumbling down, and for once, she is too weak to wade through her grief to shore her voice.
Only this once, she promises herself.
She turns and walks to the shore of the lake, and looks back at the Midwife. Her final farewell. Then she turns away once more, attaching her thread somewhere high, and whizzes up out of sight.
"Mama," Hornet starts, "Is there a way to mend a family that’s been torn out at the seams?" She speaks poetically to the bugs of Hallownest, but all Weavers conceptualize the world that way, in needle and thread.
"Not easily," Herrah responds. Forever a bit too blunt for her own good. "Some of them don’t."
Hornet stays silent, looking bitter.
"That reminds me of a story, though!" Herrah brightens up, hoping her daughter will smile. "An old one. Once upon a time, there was a weaver who lost her family. They had been enchanted to be nothing more than maskflies-"
“So like a spell, mother?” Hornet tries out the word. It’s more correct than mama, but some of the wrongness remains.
“Yes, little one. The Pure Vessel, like both gods that spawned it, can focus soul. However, being Void, it cannot generate any of its own.” The Queen’s voice is smooth and even, and she nestles into herself like a humbly proud mother hen on her eggs. “Hence, the Kingsoul.”
Hornet, for all she knows the Pure Vessel is an object, finds herself unsettled by how the Queen speaks.
“Among beasts, mothers would be willing to let their children eat them if food was scarce.”
The White Queen blinks. “That’s morbid, dear. Why bring this up?”
Hornet looks away. “No reason, your highness,” she responds. “Merely a musing.”
The gardens are as well-kept and contemplative as ever, but Hornet’s little reverie is interrupted by the sound of scuttling feet. No one in the Palace has finer ears than Princess Hornet, and she clocks it as the second clumsiest royal retainer (the first was in the process of being detained over last week’s tea incident) before they even reach the midpoint of the hallway.
“My Queen! Excuse me! Y
our highness, if I may-”
Lurien raises his hand, and the butler quiets. Still, their anxiety is clear as they eye the young princess, who is currently mashing paintbrushes bristles-first onto paper, globs of paint radiating like tiny suns. Lurien, too, feels his butler’s anxiety, but knows that he has no jurisdiction to tell the princess to do anything.
“I’m making flowers,” Hornet insists. “Me and Hollownite,” (she says its title like it’s one word, like a name) “are going to grow up and rule the kingdom together, and they won’t stop me from picking flowers in the Queen’s Garden because it’ll be my garden now and I can pick all the flowers I want.”
“Princess,” Lurien begins carefully, trying not to flinch every time she brings the brush down, “The Pale King is immortal, as is the White Queen. You will never rule the kingdom in their steads because they will not die.”
“No, I will,” she says, with more confidence than Lurien has ever had about anything. “They have to share.”
Lurien sighs.
Hornet
waits a beat. "What? You may think me heartless but I'm not completely cold."
"Just make her stop wailing, if you can. The princess has been in there for hours screaming for her mother."
"It's quite a debt I owed. Only in allowing her to pass, and taking the burden of the future in her stead, can I begin to repay it."
She is a hatchling trying to get her mama to wake up.
She is a not-quite-adult grieving an empty bed.
Dead or Dreaming. What's the difference?
"Leave me now, ghost. Allow me a moment alone before this bedchamber becomes forever a shrine."
Ghost is too fitting a name, but in truth, Hornet thinks she's projecting. Everything dies twice these days and never lives - it's only her own self-protection that she calls them already dead.
The ghost does not leave, but instead sinks a hand into its chest, where its heart would be. It emerges holding a large flower in their hand; crystalline, perfect, impossible. They lay it gently, near a candle, light fracturing on the stone in gentle iridescence; the way it catches the candlelight, it seems to glow from within.
They turn to face her, one last time, emotionless empty sockets boring into her. And then they leave.
...Mother... Forgive my inaction... but another path may be possible...
Please, may another path be possible.
The Hollow Knight wheezes, labored, infection dripping from its throat, and it grips Hornet’s hand like a sacrament, equal parts desperation and frailty. Hornet, again, can do nothing. She is only the tower; she is the one who holds the line while her little sibling goes to fight. Always standing guard. Always waiting.
She is so bad at this. She is unused to affection, reassurance, physicality. The Hollow Knight’s hand - their one good hand - is nearly the size of her head, but is still light and shaking in hers, trying to intertwine their fingers. Every wheeze sounds like torment; every breath teases their wounds open a little more. Infection deformed and softened their carapace, malleable as if after a molt. Pustules erupt from their chest, so thin they break in places, and leak.
She presses her forehead to theirs. Void and infection mixed oozes from their eyes and the crack in their shell, and she feels it drip down her own. "Shh," she soothes, more for herself than for them. "Shh." She refuses to lie to them; they won't be okay. They're dying. They're dying, ripped apart from the inside, bleeding sickness and agony on the floor, and she will watch them fail and die like the others and she will let it happen, again and again and again.
Hornet remembers a little vessel in a different place, a different time.
You aren’t hollow, are you?
Different family. Same death.
None of you ever were.