one !
-

Every time she closes her eyes, Corinna watches her home being destroyed again.

As if every time she sleeps, the clock is set back and she's there once again to witness everything she's ever known be ripped away and replaced by the golden city of Asgard.

When she opens her eyes, she expects it all to wash away with the tears dripping from her jaw because surely this is all just some horrible nightmare. It can't be real. Her parents can't be dead. Her home can't be destroyed. There wasn't supposed to be war. This is all just a nightmare and she's just been sleeping for too long.

But her new reality is unfaltering as it stares her dead in the face.

Corinna isn't entirely sure if she will ever truly come to terms with what has befallen their family.

Just weeks before, they had been living in perfect bliss. Sipping wines beneath the glow of their twin suns, laughing and dancing at their summer dances that seemed to happen almost every night, and living their youth to its fullest extent.

Now, she is but an echo of that summer.

Winter has rushed in without warning, skipping autumn entirely. Cloaking all she'd ever known in a frost with the chill of death. And while she had escaped inside into the warmth, her parents hadn't been so lucky. The winter had taken them. Frozen them in time whilst she keeps moving on, leaving them further and further and further behind with every step, with every breath.

Every rise and fall of her chest are another breath blowing her parents further into the past.

She is not alone in her grief.

Melinoe Hawthorne grieves too. Grieves the father she left behind to die because he'd asked her to live for him and to carry their name into the history books as survivors of the Ambush of Valens.

Though she is cousin to Corinna and Calev, she is treated as much less and works as the handmaiden to the fallen princess, but there hasn't been much in terms of maid's work as of late. Not with Corinna hardly moving twenty paces from her bed, rarely changing clothes, rarely stirring to eat, rarely taking care of hygiene.

Where the woman had once been a calculating, observant sort, she is now a hollow case.

Much of her day is spent lying in bed gazing out of the window to her right. Sobbing when she has the energy. Eating when she's forced. Sleeping when she's exhausted herself.

The stillness of her grief consumes her.

There is little emotion inside of her besides that grief these days.

That frustrates Melinoe to no end. There is no motivation for revenge, no want to avenge those lost, and not even any desire to make use of the life she still has. The life ended for many before their time. But not her. Not her and yet she lies within the walls of Asgard and sobs her days away.

She supposes that Calev is at least doing something with his life, even if it signed off aforementioned life to Asgard.

But even his pledge to the Asgardian army isn't enough for her.

Not enough because fighting in Odin's army isn't going to take back Valens. It's never going to make up for the people they abandoned. Their citizens who were left to die whilst they fled.

Melinoe suppresses this bitterness as she tends to her cousin. Gently wiping her face clear of salty tears, convincing her to bathe when she can be caught in semi-attachment to the world, and persuading her to eat with her, though the meals they share are silent and empty.

Nothing like the great feasts they would have back on Valens.

Back when everything was still as it should be.

They're halfway through a meal of meat and vegetables, Corinna eating as delicately as she'd been taught as if she's still sat at the high table of Valens, when Melinoe dares to break the silence.

"If this were home, the gravy would taste a lot better than this watery shite," She complains, pushing the chicken around in the pool of thin gravy. "And we would dine with all the windows open. The evening breeze coming in, but we wouldn't be cold because the food is hot, and the wine is warming."

Corinna is looking at her. She's listening to every word, but still she does not speak.

Her voice is a rare sound these days.

"And everyone would be drunk before they've even finished their food." Melinoe stabs a boiled potato and stuffs it into her mouth, chewing as she thinks of home. She swallows and continues, "I wish we could go back, cousin. I want to go back."

"I don't," Corinna says quietly.

"How could you not want to? Valens is our home," She snaps, the bitterness jumping out to bite, even though these were the first words she's said in three days.

"I don't," She repeats even more quietly.

Without another word, Corinna lifts the plate onto the bedside table and lies back down on the bed, lying on her side to watch the sunset on another day in Asgard.

Melinoe can't eat anymore either. Not with that admission from the cousin she'd once admired for her strength. The woman who'd defended her against men with wandering eyes and dirty mouths, the woman who'd charmed dozens into their willing demise with promises of greatness, the woman who would've made a glorious Queen.

The woman who lies in the bed is not a shade of who she'd known, and the thought is sour.

That woman died during the Ambush of Valens.

-

-

Two days later, Melinoe brings up Valens as she's carefully rinsing the soap from her cousin's dark locks.

"Wouldn't it be nice to be able to go back?" She questions, careful to keep her tone soft as not to spook the jarred woman.

"I don't want to," Corinna says and then she speaks no more.

She sits in the soapy waters of the bath just staring straight ahead, barely blinking, barely doing anything at all.

Melinoe helps her from the bath and moves to dry her, but Corinna snatches the towel from her in a movement quicker than any she's made since they landed on Asgard and she'd become the living-dead girl she is now.

"Leave," She demands quietly and wraps the towel around herself, grabbing another for her hair.

"I'll fetch your dinner," Melinoe replies, ducking from the room with the beginnings of a smile on her face.

She's finally getting through to her, even if it's by nagging her about taking back what's rightfully theirs when she quite clearly has no intentions of doing so.

That lack of intention is what bothers Melinoe, even beyond the crippling grief her cousin is clearly experiencing, because that means she's given up, just like the brother who's pledged himself to an army of strangers for life.

So, that just leaves her.

The last believer.

The final chance for vengeance.

When she comes back with the bowl of piping soup and a hunk of bread, she's surprised to find Corinna perched at the vanity. Though she has dressed herself, it seems not much progress was made beyond that. She sits staring at herself in the dusty mirror, as hollow and unmoving as ever.

"Cousin?" Melinoe shuts the door behind her and crosses the room swiftly. She puts the soup down on the vanity. "Eat while I brush out your hair."

Corinna says nothing, but by the time she returns with the brush she's dipping a chunk of bread into the vegetable soup.

Her hair is long and takes a long time to brush out, but Melinoe has the patience. She's always had patience and maybe that's just part of growing up as merely a cousin to the Prince and Princess, the heir and his wonderful sister.

Always in the background, always in their looming shadow.

But she'd learnt to understand that's just how it is and how it is likely to always be, even here.

She sets the brush down and offers her a gentle smile in the reflection of the mirror. "There, all done," She says, stroking her fingers down the damp length of her hair.

"Braid it," Corinna demands suddenly, her voice croaky and stare intense even through the buffer of the mirror.

"But it's still wet and it'll take longer to dry if I braid it," She reasons, already seeing it begin to leave a darker patch of damp on the back of her dress.

"Braid it," She repeats, this time more firmly.

And, purely for the fact that Corinna sounds more like herself than she has in weeks, Melinoe nods her head.

-

1461 words
9.5.19

finally updating this because i actually sat down and plotted this all out (procrastination at its finest) so expect more updates of this fairly soon. also i will fight for corinna don't @ me