Notes: Written for the Picture is Worth a Thousand Words challenge for this picture.
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On her last night in Chicago she went down to the lake and watched the sun rise over the frozen pier.
She didn�t know it was her last night, not then, but the next night when she fell asleep in her cold palace room, she dreamed, the way she used to in the real world, before her life shattered to pieces around her.
The pier was the place where it had happened, and nothing had changed since that morning except the snow that frosted the ground and the dock. But she was not the April she had been when Fenrir had risen from the water and carried her and the boys along in Senna�s wake. Everworld had changed her, and she was under no illusions that it had been for the better.
Her hands ached from the cold, even wrapped in her gloves, and she rubbed them idly together, trying not to remember the feel of Senna�s blood on them, the warm slickness that never seemed to leave her.
She thought of going to confession, of kneeling in the presence of God and seeking absolution for her sins, but she had been in the presence of too many gods lately, and what she had done could not be forgiven. Rationalized, perhaps, and even accepted in that warped reality where murder was a part of everyday life. But not forgiven, not here.
The April in this reality was not a murderer, but she was no longer that girl.
She had been fading, slowly, gradually, and she imagined that under her coat there were gaps in her, holes like the one Jalil had shown her. Or maybe she was just drifting away the way Christopher had, flickering in and out like a television losing its signal. It didn�t matter how it happened, because she knew that sooner or later she would go to sleep and find herself in dreams rather than in this life, and the world would wake that morning to find her gone.
It no longer hurt, that realization. Everworld had become her default, her center, and so on her last morning in the real world she sat and watched the sun rise through the fog, waiting to wake up.
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It rained the night they lost David in battle, and she imagined that the skies were weeping.
But this was Everworld after all, so maybe they were.
Christopher broke into the last store of liquor, and when she found him he was crying the big blubbering tears that only drunks and children could cry. She held him and prayed silently, for him, for David, for all of them. When he finally stilled in her arms, drifting off into sleep, she discovered that her own cheeks were wet with tears and her prayers had brought her no comfort.
Even here, in a place where animals talked and a different god ruled around every corner, there was no answer.
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Etain and Baldwin were married quietly and she stood in the shadows and watched, knowing that the disapproval on Jalil�s face was a mirror of her own.
She almost expected the knock on her door late that night, and when Christopher came in, she could see that he hadn�t been drinking, or crying. He just looked blank, like a lost little boy, and she wanted to say something comforting, to take him in her arms, but he hadn�t come for comfort, not really. He had just come so that he didn�t have to be alone. He curled up on the far side of her bed and just lay there, staring at the wall.
He fell asleep before she did, and when she finally dreamed she found herself wandering the world like a ghost for the first time.
David hadn�t told them how painful it was.
In the morning she woke to find Christopher curled around her, and she closed her eyes and felt the heat of his skin against her back, fearing that she would fall back asleep and find herself once again in a place where no one could see her, or touch her, or hear her when she cried.
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�The time has come,� Thor said the night before the battle, and Mjolnir struck the table with such a force that it split the great stone slab in two.
She watched the men around her cheer in response, saw Christopher and Jalil standing alongside Viking warriors, no longer looking like they didn�t belong in this place. Her eyes sought out the women in the crowd, warrior women who were so far removed from how she had ever seen herself.
But she lifted Galahad�s sword and yelled along with them, because this was the life she had chosen.
And later, as they all trailed off to their beds, some for the last time, she turned and watched over her shoulder as Merlin waved a hand at the table and sent the two halves sliding smoothly back together.
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She wished sometimes that her life could be mended like that, that the two versions of her could somehow combine and become someone who was strong but not a murderer, who still had faith in something bigger than those who fought alongside her.
But that other April walked through her former life like a ghost, and she no longer had any desire to return to that existence. So when she slept, she dreamed instead of wandering, and though it was not as good as the real thing, it was better than nothing.
That night, before the battle, she dreamed of the pier, of going back there and sinking her hands into the snow, feeling the memory of Senna�s blood melting from her skin.
The next morning she woke to the touch of Christopher�s hand on her cheek, and for just a moment she longed to return to the dream, to stay forever in that place where she no longer felt her guilt.
Instead she rose and dressed for battle in the cold silence of her room.