Just something I finished typing up. It's really really rough, but maybe you'll enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.
Because let's face it - grief doesn't make much sense sometimes anyway. And sometimes, it hits people even when you, too, need to be held.
***
She knew she hadn’t truly understood, or so she figured. Words on the page were mysteries to her, even after trying to read and learn and better herself with her friend’s help. Knowing about her dyslexia made her all the more acute of it, knowing that her childhood being called an idiot was merely the fault of something Cath had known nothing about, a problem she hadn’t been able to face before.
Because of that, she though that she had read wrong. That she hadn’t seen the words, that maybe she’d been wrong . . . But she also knew that she also could’ve been right.
What on earth could her mother have had to do with Valhalla? She didn’t understand. She understood so little of what she’d written, of the name (what she assumed was a name) and its significance and the implications of what her mother had scribed. It made as much sense as the rest of her day had made, which was little. Little to none.
She’d made it to the end of the hall, to the door of the person she’d wanted to see the most - but to her surprise, even as she laid her heavy hand upon the door, she thought she heard shouts. Sobs. Sounds of something breaking, even, but L’Fae didn’t have time to register all of it as she knocked on the door, the steady knock knock knock knock knock-
Eventually, the sounds died away. And so did her rapping at the door.
L’Fae stared at her feet, stared at her bare toes and her bare legs and her bare knees and then at the hem of her dress. She stared at them through blurred eyes, through tired eyes, as she waited and listened to the sounds on the other side of the door. All of them quiet, all of them muted. With more than one quiet whimper passing through the heavy oaken door.
When the door creaked open and Natasha’s bare feet appeared in her view, L’Fae had a feeling she knew what had happened. Barely in her vision were broken shards, remains from anger and grief. L’Fae figured she should’ve known - Natasha had always been so strong to her, had always seemed like she was invulnerable. Even after she heard of her father’s death, Natasha had seemed to hold herself together, strengthen herself with words of vengance and bloody promises.
But instead, she’d just been keeping it all inside. Keeping it inside, and letting it out in anger and frustration by destroying - the thing she thought she could do the best.
And at that point, on the floor before her, L’Fae could see tears dropping from her lover’s face and leaving dark stains on the floor.
L’Fae couldn’t help it. When she looked up and took in her lover’s red, tearstained face, her own tears rolled down her face as well.
“L’Fae?”
L’Fae shook her head; I don’t want to talk. Because she didn’t, didn’t understand and didn't want to talk. And from the look on Natasha’s face, she knew that her own stress - her total mind-numbing confusion - couldn’t amount to what was going inside her lover’s head. What thoughts had to have been blowing through her mind.
So L’Fae shut her eyes and stepped forward, close enough so they could pull each other into their arms, and she gave them both the silent permission to cry right there in the doorway.
And they did.
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