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Chapter Text

You and I have always been together. As infants we slept in the same cradle. As toddlers we shared the same bed. As children we accepted the pull that brought us into the same spaces as often as possible. Nuada and Nuala, always together. I used to marvel over the smoothness of your skin thinking that for it to stretch so softly, so tightly, over your innards, marble must have melted over your bones.

When we were small you used to sweat, much more than I ever did. I teased that you were raining and you chased me shaking your head like a dog. You tasted salty like the sea. I shrieked and ran but secretly I liked feeling those droplets sliding over my skin, hot like the sun. And I liked the way your hair grew wavy when wet. I wanted to be a boy so I would sweat and you could taste me, too.

Your smell was almost as nice as your rain. I spoke of it once to my ladies-in-waiting who were still girls like me. I told them how your body smelled of heat and leather with some other smell below it that I couldn't name. They laughed with me about the pleasant smells of boys but my governess said young ladies shouldn't enjoy the scents of their fathers or brothers. She said it as though the words were something slimy. It made me angry that she would talk of your smell like that. She could keep her opinion to herself, I told her, if she had nothing of value to add.

Her eyes watched me then, hard and close, and I felt as if I had done something wrong, something bad, by wanting to have your smell in my hair as I did after a night in our bed. My ladies looked at me from the corners of their little eyes, the giggles muffled behind hands like secrets but I knew they were still laughing - at me not with me. I did not talk about your scent anymore, though I still thought you smelled better than anyone.

As we grew older I wished more and more that I had been born a boy so I could go places with you instead of with them. It was not that I minded being a girl, but anything that kept me from you was awful. You would have taken me everywhere if you could have, I think. You never minded when I would come, not even when the other boys teased you. And if any of them teased me you knocked them to the ground before they could finish the taunt. Your eyes were golden flames in your pale face, like suns. Leave her alone, you said. Come on, Nuala, sit over here.

I learned to be a proper lady so the instructors would leave me be and I could bring my ladies outside. I wanted to watch you even if I wasn't allowed to do what you did and I knew you liked having me there, my eyes on you as you learned to ride a battle charger or joust. You liked to glance over, slyly of course, and see me smiling when you did it right. You never minded if I saw you get it wrong, either.

The ladies, they would whisper about the other boys and ask me which ones I liked. I named one, the one they all seemed to like best after you. You were the only one I liked, of course, but I didn't say it because I had learned from that governess. I kept you to myself, my secret heart wrapped up in another body beating in your chest. How could any other boy compare?

I tried to pay more attention to boys as I grew but it was like sitting at the bottom of a deep gorge - I couldn't see anything else around me no matter how hard I tried. You were my world. Anything that happened to me, any decision I faced, the only question that mattered was the only one I asked: What does this mean for us? Always us, never me.

I cried when the blood came the first time. I didn't call for anyone or tell my maid, I just laid there in between my sheets feeling shameful. You came anyway. You knew. You said I was silly to cry and I should be glad because it meant I was still alive but I didn't feel that way. You put your arms around me. Your heart pounded against my back because I couldn't stand for you to see my weakness.

If I were like you I could be tall and strong and I wouldn't feel shame. I felt wretched for bleeding alone, without you. I felt alone.

What does this mean for us?

It meant I was farther away from you - different. It meant if we let ourselves we could be closer than ever before. I was glad you were the one to help me to the bath, but I was sad you didn't stay. You pretended you didn't want to, but I saw you look back when you closed the door and I wanted to say, Stay with me. I didn't because I was afraid you wouldn't and that would be worse than if you just left.

The water was hot like your skin. I imagined your essence sinking into me, transforming my softness into muscles, cleansing away this wound you didn't share with me, healing it. The steam made my head swim and I floated weightless for ages before I got out and dried off but when I did I felt different, as if I really had absorbed something from the water. I didn't feel like a little girl anymore, I felt old. I felt more like you. Less like you.

When I looked in the mirror I looked different, too. Maybe I was bleeding away my youth.

That night I wore blue to dinner and your face lit up when you saw me. It was as if all of you had folded up until every bit was looking out from your eyes - all your want and hope and dread and fear and love and trust and joy. I could see it all streaming from you to cover me.

Your hug was different. You were different. I wondered if you had been bleeding too, invisibly. You smelled tangy and wild but I liked it. Your arm stayed around my waist until we got to the hall where you let go and took my hand on your arm like any good escort. The space between us felt huge and I wondered if we would ever reach each other beyond it.

You leaned in close and said, You look lovely, and then you were gone, moving among the crowds.

I don't think you meant to find me like that, did you? You had this startled look on your face when you saw me so I picked up my wrap to cover myself. I wasn't upset but you looked as if I had struck you. There was pain in your eyes like it hurt to look at me. What's wrong? I asked. I went to you without thinking. Why wouldn't I?

Don't look at me like that, you said. I asked how I was looking at you. You brought your eyes up to mine. You said, Like you're calling me to come to you. You looked so sad I wanted to take you in my arms and stroke your hair like I when we were children. You turned and left, but that moment never did.

I could see a shadow in your ochre eyes when you looked at me after. A specter clung to us like shade to a tree. I don't think you meant to see me, but I think that's when everything changed. You had seen too much to go back. I haunted you, I know, because from then on you haunted me.

That night was the first time I had the dream. It started out the same way. You came in just the same, but the look in your eyes became something hungry and you would come to me. I didn't ask if you dreamt it too - it would've been too much - but I think that maybe you did.

I asked to come with you to practice one day and you looked at me strangely, like I wasn't myself. I wouldn't like it, you said, but if I wanted to I could. How long would I need to get ready? I was ready then so I followed you like your shadow until you were. I was afraid you'd change your mind and leave without me. Silly, I know, but I was often afraid where we were concerned. When we did leave I felt light, light, like air. Like mist, scattered in the face of your brisk movement. I did my best to stretch my shorter legs to match your stride but even so I had to run every few paces to keep up. You had grown so much taller in the winter months. I wanted my slippers to click against the floor as sharply as your boots, but when I tried to step harder all I did was make my skirts rustle so I gave up, moving soundlessly beside you.

The arena was bigger than I expected, or perhaps it only looked bigger to me standing inside it for the first time. I waited on the side feeling the gritty sand against my legs while you joined the other boys, some of them much older and bigger than you. I was afraid when you paired off with the biggest because it looked like he would hurt you. From the hill where I would sit with my ladies your fights looked like pretty patterns that danced in the light. Down here it was real, the blades were sharper, more deadly, and when his flashed towards you I felt my heart leap into my throat but you proved faster, more sure-footed. Your lance was violent poetry and your body kept the rhythm. Our blood was the metronome.

I felt things I had never felt before, perhaps because I was so close to you. My hands longed to grip the weight of a blade, my muscles burned with the need to strike and I found myself shaking with the effort of holding myself back. A warcry formed in my throat, shrill and loud, but I swallowed it.

It was exciting, these new violent sensations in my familiar body. I ached to be part of the war dance, but I knew you wouldn't let me, and I didn't know the steps so I watched, my heart thudding against my ribs in time with yours, my body held in sweet tension against my restraint.

Your partner caught you off guard once, striking you with the flat of a blade and the bruise flared on my side too, strangely satisfying. You looked guilty but I was proud to carry the same marks as you. I did cry out then, a noise without words but perfectly articulate. Rise! it said. Kill! You sprang up fiercer than before.

When you were done you came over smiling. How was I? you asked. You were perfect, I said, and your smile grew so big I thought it might swallow your face. Your hair was wavy. I wanted you to shake your sweat on me as when we were small, the smell of you pungent and sharp in my nose. It made me thirsty and I almost licked your shoulder for the taste.

Did you see that in my face? I think you must have because your smile turned sad and your eyes were hungry. I fought to tell you it was all right, that you had no need of sadness, but my tongue felt thick in my mouth.

I was silent.

We walked back to the castle side by side, but not touching. Not then. It was too much. We were too much.

That night the dream was changed, different. You came to me on the sands of the arena and your kisses were hard. You bruised my lips with the force of them. Your teeth pulled blood from my mouth and skin. I raked your back with my nails. I licked the sweat from your chest without reservation with the sand clinging to my skin. Your eyes on me in the dream were full of sadness.

I woke up crying.

Pain makes people see things clearly or it blinds them, you said. I wonder which it was with us.

The night before you left for war there was feasting in honor of those who would die. I wore blue because I knew you would like it, and because I did not know what else to do. You toasted with the men, and you danced as the occasion required, though I knew you hated dancing. Your hair was smooth and glossy. I missed the waves.

Every second that was your own you stole back to my side.

I did not cry. I would not burden you with my grief on your last night, and in my room I had the only gift I could think to give. I stayed silent, waiting for when the evening died down and we could escape to say our real good byes away from the covetous gaze of the court. It was nearly midnight when I drew up behind you in the shadow of a pillar and took your hand, drawing you away when none would notice.

You smiled, mischievous and grateful. You squeezed my hand as we stole through the corridors and up the stairs. I did not speak because I could not trust my voice yet and your face was troubled. Your palm felt sweaty in my grip but I didn't care. I bit my lip to keep it from shaking.

My rooms were empty as I had arranged. The moon shone through my windows, the only light we needed to see one another. The smell of pomegranates lingered on me from my wine and I wished I could smell you through it. I dropped your hand and went to sit on the bed. You sat beside me, our hips and shoulders touching. Over your wrist I slipped a bracelet that looked woven from very light in the chiaroscuro.

You asked me, What is it? I said, I braided strands of my hair. I wanted you to have something to touch that was a piece of me... My voice broke and the light spread into a soft glow. The tears in my eyes distorted your face so I blinked them away. I wouldn't waste a moment of our time together on my weakness. You deserved more.

I'll never take it off, you said. You ran your hand through my hair, and kissed my forehead. You stared at me. Your eyes were hungry and unsure. There was no sad smile to dilute it this time and I remember the silence before your hand tightened on the back of my neck. Your kiss was soft, so soft it felt like the touch of the moonlight.

Nuada. Your name on my lips, and that was all it took. I don't think I heard the sound you made. I think I only felt it, it was so low, but you pushed me down to the bed beside you and covered me with your body. A curtain of your hair blocked out the stars. Your hands moved over me like fire.

In my belly I felt the soft flutters of love and the electric shocks of violence blended together as they had never been in dreams. I felt the tears well up and shut my eyes against them but your hand was on my face, your voice anguished. Please, you said, Please, look at me like that. I wept and you didn't as you kissed the salty trails from my cheeks until my eyes were dry and my breath came in gasps. I was clothed in desire, my robes on the bed. I didn't remember you doing that but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

All your life you are taught what is right but in the face of want hope dread fear love trust joy, it is swept away like drout before the deluge. The boundaries of us ran together like water, blurring and merging, meeting and parting, one person or two.

You wept and I didn't, then we both did.

Chapter Text

I killed.

I killed and I maimed and I crippled and I destroyed. Man came with many. I stood with few. These were the facts of that war. I did not pretend, not even to myself. I had no illusions about what waited for me at the end of the long march through my country. I understood it was an ugly task set before me, and yet I was not prepared.

As a prince, I had been given the best tutors in all things. I knew the methods of battle, and the killing arts. My hands knew the motions to make, the force to use, the patterns to trace through bone and flesh, but they cannot teach the smell of death in an arena. There is no way to ready the soul for murder. Each must learn to discard their tender heart or die, but I could never choose to kill you. I shut my ears to the screaming and steeled my mind against the terror. I could do nothing else since I could not die. In your breast my heart grew hard and stony. If you searched it in those early days you would not have found mercy. There was nothing for you to discover in it but the blood. Their blood. Our blood. Mine and yours. And running below the torrent, my lust to spill it. I was drunk on the stench of copper.

Fools, I said as they met me. They slashed with their blades as if they might kill me, stabbed into my skin. Didn't they know my heart was far from the battle? I had hidden it away inside your skin, beneath your bones. They could never reach my heart with their blunt tools and I would never let them find yours. It was your heart that fueled me, your heart that pounded, your heart that drove me forward. Always you.

The days bled into one long day filled with pain, and fear, and dying. In the heat of it I could not remember a time when I did not grip my lance. My day was eternal. Their numbers swarmed against us, endless, washing me away. My rage was cold like the winter, merciless, stony.

Let them come forever. We will kill them forever. I said, I will fight them forever if it will keep them from you. In the night I saw your ivory flesh, your cornsilk hair, your butterfly eyes like monarch wings. You were scattered in my sky like the stars in heaven. You, and you, and you, and you, sparkling light in the darkness. My hair was a curtain across my eyes. It shut out everything but you.

You drove me forward.

They drove us back.

Seventy times seventy perfect soldiers. Seventy times seventy sins marked on my tired heart. Father was against it from the first.

The Goblin King came to him offering the answer to our dilemma. We had not the numbers to defeat the humans. We would not need numbers, the goblin said. Imagine an army that cannot be killed or defeated. Imagine soldiers that feel no pain and take no injury. He said, I offer your salvation. Father said, Build me this army, and it was so.

The relief in our people was so profound there are no words to describe it. The war had gone on too long. There were too many dead. The men were tired. Only I had lasted it with no respite. Only I still labored in these last days as if they were the first. I too was tired, but I did not let up. No weariness showed in me because it was your heart that carried me on, relentless. I took the strength you offered as my anchor against the storm. Though I had grown pale since my days in the castle, my eyes blazed gold. The light of you shining out of me, I thought.

I took the offer of the Goblin King. The Golden Army to save us, and your golden light to arm me. I would become a golden soldier.

I did not consider the price or who would pay it.

Father stood beside me in the slaughter. His eyes were sad and for the first time I could ever remember, he looked his years. I do not think it was that the killing aged him, I think it was that for first time since that war began I could see him past my bloodlust. Pain can help you see clearly, but this time it had made me blind. I asked, Father? My hand came up beneath his elbow offering support. He said, Never again, and with two words he tarnished my victory in a way that could not be undone. His sadness wounded me more deeply than any condemnation ever could have.

What did you feel, sister, when the knife of betrayal pierced me? Did you scream as I was not free to do? Did you thrash in your bed and rend your sheets to vent my anger? When we were younger it was so. If I was angry you might shatter your mirror, or throw your book across the room. If I was sad you would weep as I, a boy, could not. Or was this anger and sadness too much for you as those simpler things were not?

The room is dark, they said, to help the princess mend. That's what they called you, the princess, but I knew it was wrong. Darkness does not heal. You needed sunlight, and growing things, and space to breathe.

You were given none of them, only a dark room and a bed surrounded by curtains.

Your face was wrong. The skin was too white, without golden undertones. The eyes were too large, too dark. There was no light in you.

Did I do that? Did I take from you more than you could give? Did my heart in your breast turn black and bleed into you? It had grown heavy in the decades of war, I knew. It weighed you down. You were too slight to bear my demons up.

Little Sister, Little Bird. Too much to me and not enough. My star, my soul, I tainted you. I'm sorry. Your heart in me was cold.

I think there must have been a time before our birth when we swam like tadpoles in the blood of our mother that I found you. How strange it must have been to discover I was not alone. Even then you were with me. Before our skin grew to cover our insides I reached into you and took your heart. I know I did, for that is what I do: I take. I stole your life away, too much to you and not enough. I'd give it back if I could let you go, but ever since I found you unborn I have been too weak to be alone. You were stronger. You learned to bleed alone and ever since I lived in terror that you would learn to live without me.

When I came to you that day it wasn't just because you needed me. I sensed your fear, and your wretchedness but I also sensed your pain and I was horrified because there was no echo of it in me. I ran the entire way to your room, my chest heaving and the bitter serpent of it writhing in my belly. You wouldn't even look at me. I said you were silly. I murmured reassurance. I do not even remember what and I dismissed your tears, but I was harsh because I wanted to do the same to my fear and I could not. I said those things but I held you to me as much for my comfort as yours. I knew you wanted me to stay but I didn't because I needed to prove I could be without you as you were without me. I went alone as you bled alone, but all I could do was leave. You were living.

Looking at you in that bed behind those curtains, between us not around us, I knew that nothing they could do would help. It was my darkness that cloaked you, me that surrounded you. They were the curtains of my hair that trapped you in your bed. You were too small to hold all of me inside you, for I was not just myself any longer. I was more, or less. Too much of me and not enough. My course was simple. There was only one action I could perform: the only thing to be done for you. Always you, never me.

When you woke up it was to a wasteland. The same one I rode into rose up in you as the sickness fell away behind me. It was barren with only you to give it life. But you could do that. Your tears became the rainfall that brought springtime and you found in yourself a world with light, if not love. I could not surrender your heart, for I could not be anything that was not part of you, not even myself, but I could leave you with a life that did not suffer this hate. I could leave you with a life. I could leave.

It was my gift to you, the only thing I could give. A world all your own with space to breathe.

A world without me.

Chapter Text

Once, when we were very, very small, we laid together on the peak of a mountain gazing into the sky. There was no moon and the stars were bright like the lights in your eyes. You stretched out one long, perfect arm to show me a nebula in the blackness. It looked like a heart, pulsing and red against the velvet night. A giant heart the size of the sky. I missed you with that kind of ache.

When I was strong enough to walk I tried to find you. I did not need to know which way you had gone, it was written in my blood. I could not have gone anywhere but to you. The world faded out. It did not matter. I did not matter. Our people found me five days later in a riverbed. My feet were shredded. I had not stopped to put on boots. My knees were bloody. I had not paused to eat or drink. I was dying. They kept me alive.

Like a traitorous thing, my body mended. Even death was denied me in the endless passage of moments. No peace. No rest. When I slept I had visions of your face. You haunted me. I saw your hair falling like a curtain. I traced the shape of your arms. I found you within and without me, a cruel reminder of what was gone. In your chest, my heart withered, turned to ash. In me, your heart was still.

I must have died because how could I live without you?

You did not want me with you. That knowledge consumed me in small pieces. I was hollow, a shell going through the motions of being a princess. If someone had broken open my ribcage they would have found nothing but a heart, and that belonged to you. I was a puppet body, dancing at the end of strings labelled duty, father, and kingdom. You had pulled back the veil on my emptiness, and no one understood.

Here is my secret: I did not care if I died. I knew why you had gone, why you had left me in this endless void. You had given me space, and a life, but I wanted your darkness to suffocate me. I missed the hate spilling into me like poison. I wanted your venom, because if you were destroying me then at least I was filled with you. I had sunshine, and brightness, but all I wanted was a boundless night sky. You, and you, and you, and you. And if I had to die to have you, then I wanted to die.

You left to give me time. I did not want it. I wanted nothing. I needed you.

There were days. Then weeks. Then years. I felt none of them. It did not matter. Time does not matter. The passing of it does not touch the boundaries of want, or need, or loss, or love. My world was defined by your absence, drawn as much in the lack of you as in the strokes of your presence. I had shaped the stars to match your outline, and without you I was lost, adrift in the passing of days, then weeks, then years. It did not matter. Time did not matter, and it did not heal the loss of you. It did not fill the places you were not. The seat in the great hall was still empty. The room next to mine was not touched. The shape of your body was not rumpled into my sheets.

What does this mean for us?

I watched my mirror. It was the closest thing to you in this place: me. The eyes were the right color, I could narrow them to the same shape. The hair was the right shade, and texture. If I stared hard enough and waited for my eyes to water the image blurred. For a moment I could see the ghost of you in me, and then the tears would fall, and you'd be gone. Love and hate and no difference between the two. How I loathed the moment when you would transform into me. At every turn my body betrayed me. It sickened and drove you from me. It lived and kept you from me. It wept and veiled you from me. My only solace was knowing that you lived, too, that you could find me, if you wanted to.

My pain was knowing you didn't. I hated you because you could not see past death; could not see that it was better than this desert. I hated the blindness of your devotion. I wanted to claw your skin from your bones for this transgression. I wanted to feel it in my skin when my nails gouged your flesh. You'd bleed and I wouldn't, then we both would.

I found you in a dream once in the early days of our separation. We fell into sleep at the same moment. You were walking through a field of asphodel dressed all in black. I had never seen you in black and the color of the cloth seemed to bleed into your flesh. The hollows around your eyes were dark, as were your lips. A shiver tickled my spine imagining you to be a prince of the underworld ruling nightmares. You didn't see me but I watched as you sat beneath a dark oak and cried. The tears ran red and I woke feeling unsettled.

That night at the mirror I raged because the sight of you was too fresh in my eyes for this paltry illusion to cast similarity. I shattered that imperfect impostor, slicing my fingers on the shards. Those thin lines taunted me and the knowledge flooded me that somewhere in the world, your fingers, too, had thin lines. My eyes were twin flames in the broken glass. My fingers trembled, but no longer with rage. The edges caressed my skin, butterfly kisses from your black lips.

It kissed my face, from cheek to cheek across my nose below my eyes. Warmth streamed down my face. My tears ran gold. I wept for happiness. You were written in my blood, and I was covered with you. I was not alone.

The broken glass was cleared away. The mirror was not replaced. I hid one shard beneath my pillow and though I never found you in a dream again, I would open a slit in our skin each night and sleep soundly knowing that somewhere you were bleeding too. Pain helped me see things clearly: I could not bring you back. I was not strong enough to hold you down, so I would be strong enough to let you go. In my mind the question spilled out. The question I had never asked before. A question that before then had never mattered: What does this mean for me? Just this once not us. Only me.

It meant that we were separate, divided. It meant that we were two halves instead of a whole. The space between us was vast but I knew now that one day we would cross it. I would be a shell until I could be a princess again. Until you found me again. Until I found you. And then we'd both die.

I had the dream for the first time since you'd gone, the dream I'd had since the first night you saw me. You came into the bedroom. I picked up my wrap. What's wrong? I asked. Don't look at me like that, you said. Like what? Like I'm not a monster. Your eyes were hungry as you tossed aside the covering. Your kiss drew blood and your mouth tasted like oil. When you smiled asphodel tumbled from your lips and smothered me.

I woke with my heart pounding, the taste of copper on my lips. I had bitten my tongue. My limbs were tensed, my muscles straining against some force I could not name. I felt tired but spent the rest of the night awake. The light of day chased away your shade and after that my life fell into a easy pattern.

I was princess from the first light of dawn to the last ray of dusk, but with the coming dark I would dream of the limbs of your body and slake my thirst on phantoms of our past. I was living a half life, but I was living. I was alive.

And somewhere in the world, so were you.