Archive of Our Own ^beta

For three days after the Great Twilight’s end, Alisa Reinford doesn’t exist.

For a brief moment, the united (remaining) forces of Class VII had rallied under Juna’s fervent declaration that Rean would be back. They’d been almost smiling, as the Courageous II flew up to meet them.

And then they saw Elise. And she saw them, too—and she knew. Alisa doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to forget how she screamed. 

Only silence followed, then, as the true weight of what they had lost settled over them.

Alisa knows she can’t be doing this; she’s an adult with responsibilities, and in the wake of stopping a war-barely-started, the fallout will perhaps be even more immense than it would have been in the case of one dragged on throughout weeks and months. As a member of Class VII, Alisa Reinford has a duty to see them all through the coming crisis with all she has.

Alisa thinks, bitterly, that duty can go fuck itself.

As the Tuatha de Danann had crumbled into nothing and faded from the sky, Prince Olivert had been one of the few among them that had kept his head together. He’d rallied their ramshackle fleet and led them, boldly, straight into Heimdallr—had landed the Courageous II outside of the Imperial Palace as though without a care in the world, and had immediately taken charge. At some point, gentle hands had led Alisa off the ship, and gentle words had told her a room had been prepared for her. 

After that, it’s dark and hazy. Sometimes, Alisa is aware enough to know that Sharon is there—coaxing her to drink, pleading for her to eat, giving her a shoulder to weep upon. Beyond that, though, no one bothers her. No one dares—or, perhaps, no one remembers to do so. She isn’t complaining. She doesn’t want people thinking about her; she wants everyone and everything to stay far away.

And then, on the fourth day, her sanctuary of solitude is violated.

Irina Reinford has never truly cared for her daughter’s boundaries. It shouldn’t surprise Alisa that she isn’t about to start doing so now.

It still hurts, though, to have her mother scowling down at her. “Alisa,” she says, and there’s no sympathy in her voice. Just that constant disapproval. “Alisa, get up.”

“Go away,” Alisa wails, voice cracking, and tries to hide under her covers like a teenager with a hangover—except the only thing she’s been drinking down is grief.

“I will not,” her mother says, and tugs her blankets back out of her hands. “You are acting like a child, Alisa. Hiding away in here, when the company needs you—

“The company?” Alisa asks, near hysterical. “The company? Do you think I give a fuck what the Reinford Group needs of me? You have no idea—”

“I have every idea!” Alisa’s head snaps to the side from the force of her mother’s slap. “Do you think you’re the only one to have lost something, you silly little girl? Some of us don’t have the luxury of hiding away to wallow, Alisa. And I have had enough of Sharon coddling you. You are going to get up.”

Swallowing, Alisa stares at her mother. She’s paler than usual. Her lips are trembling—anger, maybe, but Alisa can see how red her eyes are.

“I’m sorry, Mother,” she whispers. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save him.”

“You never could have, Alisa,” she says, and she just sounds…exhausted. “Your father has been dead for…a very long time.”

“You still had hope though, right?”

“Oh, I always had hope,” her mother confesses. “No doubt that’s why I feel as though I’ve lost him all over again. But even with that hope, there was a part of me that had resigned itself to this outcome. And that is why I am telling you to get out of the bed, Alisa.” A hard frown. “I will not lose you too.”

“Really? That’s why you’re doing this? That’s why you just—hit me? You don’t want to ‘lose me too?’”

Her mother pinches her nose. “I shouldn’t have done that,” she says, which is very pointedly not an apology, but Irina Reinford has always been allergic to the word sorry. “But do you have any idea how much you’ve terrified me over these past few days?”

Alisa can’t help the scoff that rises up. For the first time since Valimar rose up too high in the sky for her to see, she’s feeling something other than hollow.

She’s angry, and it’s wonderful.

“Maybe I don’t care,” she spits out, glaring. “Maybe I don’t care how scared you are, Mother! Maybe I don’t care if you lose me!”

“You don’t mean that, Alisa. Stop acting so childish at once—”

“Stop acting like you care! You don’t care! You’ve never cared!”

Alisa…try and get along with your mum…alright? You’ve got your differences…but at least she’s still alive to talk to you…

As swiftly as the anger had risen up, it falls back down again, to be replaced by bile clawing at her throat. Alisa’s head aches something fierce, and she gags around sobs as she chokes up everything she hasn’t been eating. Her entire body shakes. 

“Oh, Alisa.” Her mother’s voice; a whisper as a pair of hands folds over her own, heedless of the mess she’s made. “Let’s get you into the shower, okay?”

Miserably, Alisa nods, and lets her mother tug her out of the bed and into the bathroom. The cold tiles feel nice as she slides down against them and lets the warm water run over her. She closes her eyes and sighs. “I’m sorry, Mother. I know you care, really.”

“I do,” she promises. “I know we’ve had our…difficulties…but I care about you, Alisa. Sometimes it scares me, knowing you are one of very few things left in this world that I care about. And that is why I can’t lose you.”

“It’s only been three days, Mother. I just need some time.”

“That’s how it always starts,” her mother says. “The first night your father didn’t come home, I told myself he’d gotten caught up in work. The next day, when he hadn’t called, I waited all day to hear from him, not wanting to admit that something was wrong. When he didn’t come home that night, I called the police. And the next few days after that are a blur. I didn’t come back to reality until my father stormed into my room to yell at me. He told me that you were hungry—that you’d been waiting for me to come out of my room since the policeman had left because you didn’t want to make me angry by bothering me. He said that when you called him, the first thing you said was that you were sorry for bothering him. You’d eaten all the bread and cereal in the house, and you were young enough back then that you weren’t allowed to prepare anything else by yourself. I’d lost myself so much in my grief that if you hadn’t remembered your grandfather’s number you would have starved.”

There’s raw pain in her mother’s voice—guilt never absolved. Alisa doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t know if she can absolve her mother of this, even as her heart aches for her.

“I became so determined to never lose myself in my grief again that I…perhaps overcorrected,” her mother allows. “I’m not saying you have to follow in my footsteps, but…I cannot stand to see you wallow, Alisa.”

A poisonous, bitter part of her wants to spit out so don’t watch, then, but years of estrangement have taught Alisa the shape and language of her mother’s love. This is as true as she can be; Irina and Alisa Reinford may be fully willing to die for each other—there are no lengths Alisa wouldn’t go to to keep her mother safe—but they will never be the kind of family who hugs it out. She’s long accepted that, even if all she wants is to crawl into her mother’s arms again.

Blinking down tears, Alisa asks: “can you leave, please?”

“Are you going to get right back into that bed the moment I do?”

“The sheets are ruined. I can’t.”

“Alisa.”

“I’ll…think about what you said,” is all Alisa can promise. “Please, just…leave me alone.”

A featherlight touch on her cheek. It could have been a kiss; it could have been her imagination. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” her mother says, and it’s really more of a warning than any sort of comfort.

Silence falls. Alisa hears the door click shut behind her mother—and then hears it swing open again. “My lady?”

“In here, Sharon.”

Sharon pokes her head into the bathroom. “Lady Alisa, I do hope Lady Irina didn’t distress you too much. I asked her to be gentle with you.”

“She was…Mother,” Alisa says. “Sorry, but I made a bit of a mess. I don’t want to put you out, but…”

Sharon ducks into a curtsey. “I am the Reinford family’s faithful maid, my lady,” she says. “Think nothing of it, for it is but my duty.”

Sharon, being Sharon, understands Alisa’s unspoken desire for privacy— true privacy, not the ‘my scary maid is always listening’ kind of privacy—and acquiesces without a word.

Once Alisa is sure she’s gone, she does what she couldn’t let herself do in front of them: she breaks down crying.

She’s not sure why she’s remembering Crow’s words from years ago now, of all times. She’s spent as much time as she can not thinking about his death—his first death—at all. It hurt too much. 

It hurts more now.

Her ribs ache from crying. Reaching up half blindly, Alisa turns the shower off. Not even bothering with a towel, she stumbles out into her room, past the bed stripped bare. Falls to her knees beside the bag that she hasn’t touched in days. The bag she screamed at Sharon over, for trying to unpack it, their first night here.

She rummages through bandages and balms and spare quartz until, right at the bottom, she finds what she wants. A silver chain, with a blue stone pendant and a silver ring threaded onto it. Neither of these things were meant for her, but they’re hers now.

And there’s a part of her that will never forgive Crow Armbrust for that fact.

-x-

It’s the last night on earth, and Alisa’s resigned herself to spending it alone.

She’s not upset by it, really. Not as upset as she once would have been, back when she was still a teenager that had no real idea of how the world worked. As it is now, she’s accepted her loss as gracefully as she can. She’s happy for them, really. She hopes they make the most of however much time they have left together.

She feels pleasantly warm and a little buzzed from the two cocktails she’d downed before wandering out to taste Mishelam’s night air. They’d been small drinks, but Sara had bullied the poor bartender into letting her mix them. With that in mind, Alisa’s probably consumed more alcohol than she thinks she has.

There’s noise all around her—her friends and her comrades, finding solace and joy before it all goes to hell tomorrow. It’s easy to get caught up in the mood—in the stars and the fireworks above her, in the music and the chatter all around her. It’s easy to drift, and keep drifting, until she finds herself standing at the Ferris Wheel.

She’s alone, but that’s no reason not to ride it, right?

She hands one of her tickets off almost absentmindedly, and it’s as she’s trying to convince her legs to cooperate with getting into the car (you’re not that drunk, Alisa) that the last voice she’d been expecting to hear calls out from behind her: “You got room for one more?”

Startled, she almost slips as she whirls around to face him. “Crow? What are you doing here?”

Ignoring her, he pulls a ticket out of his pocket and hands it to the attendant that’s been waiting very patiently for her to sit down. “Here, Alisa, let me help you in.”

Confused, Alisa doesn’t protest as he nudges her into the car before him and then shuts the door behind them. She doesn’t speak again until they’re up in the air—suddenly the view she’d vaguely wanted to see is far less important than puzzling out why Crow is here with her.

“You’re meant to be with Rean,” she says. It comes out less confused and more accusatory, somehow.

“Am I, now,” Crow says, but it’s not a question. He’s smiling at her sadly.

“Crow?”

“Alisa,” he says, teasing in that way he was back before any of this. Before Divine Knights, before the Civil War, before they ever knew he was C. Back when he was just their classmate. Just Crow. “You and I both know I’m not making it past tomorrow.”

Alisa can’t help the flinch.

“Aw, don’t look at me like that. I’m just trying to be a realist here. I’ve been living on borrowed time—and my loan is running out. When the Great Twilight is gone…”

Alisa finally manages to get her words working. The warm haze is gone; she feels starkly, disgustingly sober. “That’s not fair. That’s not fair, Crow.”

“It’s completely fair,” Crow argues, “but don’t tell Rean I said that.”

“Yeah, Rean,” Alisa reminds him. “Why aren’t you with him?”

“Why would I be with him?”

“Because you love him, and he loves you,” Alisa says, and any bitterness she might feel about that fact is washed away by her desire for Crow to listen to her, dammit. “You’re so convinced you’re dying tomorrow—and you’re really going to leave him without a goodbye?”

“Oh, yeah, what a nice goodbye that would be,” Crow says, and there’s no hiding his bitterness. “Sorry that I’m dying tomorrow, want to preempt the grief with a good fuck?”

“Don’t be crass,” Alisa says, because it’s that or start crying, “you know it would mean more than that.”

“Yeah, well, I know something else, too,” Crow says. “I know Rean loves you just as much as you love him, and if you go to him tonight, he won’t turn you away.”

“Crow—”

“I’ve made up my mind about this,” Crow says. “You can do what you want, but I’m not budging on my decision. At least if it’s you…the memory will last, you know?”

The Ferris Wheel comes to a stop. The door to their car swings open, and Crow holds out his hand to help her off. Mutely, she takes it.

“The memory would last with you, too,” she says finally, as they walk back up to the resort together.

“Nah,” is all Crow says in response, and doesn’t elaborate. “Alisa, here.” He pulls out an accessory that Alisa hasn’t seen him use before; when he drops it into her hand, she can feel the power it hums with. “I meant it for Rean, but…it’d be kinda awkward to give it to him now, you know? Given the givens.”

Alisa frowns up at him. “You could give it to him tomorrow, if you’re so desperate to avoid him tonight.”

But Crow shakes his head. “Nope. I’ve decided about this, too—I want you to have it. And…” A moment of hesitation, before he steels himself and pulls off his right glove. He pulls a ring off of his third finger—a silver wolf head snarls at her as he deposits it right next to the chain. “Rean got this for me,” he says, wistful, and it sparks something wild and hysterical in Alisa that Rean gave Crow a ring and he still doesn’t get it. “It shouldn’t just fade with me when I go.”

There’s a lot Alisa could say in that moment—a lot that she, perhaps, should say. 

But what can she say to that?

“It’s been the pleasure of a lifetime to know you, Alisa Reinford,” Crow Armbrust says with a wink. “I hope you’ll remember me fondly once I’m gone.”

Don’t joke about such things, she could say. You never know what tomorrow will actually bring, she could say.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” she says instead, because she’s a terrible, selfish person, and the world is ending tomorrow.

“This is what I want,” Crow says, and hugs her tight. Presses a kiss to the top of her head. “Go to him, Alisa.”

And so Alisa blinks back tears, summons up all her courage, and does exactly that.

(Crow’s right, in the end. When Alisa knocks on his door, Rean doesn’t turn her away.

In hindsight, knowing that he loved her too doesn’t feel as good as she once thought it would.)

-x-

Alisa stares down at the mementos she holds in her hand—the only things left of Crow Armbrust in the world, beyond whatever Rean had stashed away after his first death—and feels something unnameable but ugly well up in her.

At least if it’s you, the memory will last, huh?

She’d heard what he said, as Ordine had taken Millium in hand and they’d gone to join Rean in leaving them behind. We kinda thought this might happen. The ‘memory’ hadn’t been for Rean like she’d thought, but for her—a consolation prize, with them both gone far, far beyond her. 

“You’re cruel,” she chokes out, and presses the chain to her chest until the ring digs in enough for it to hurt. “You’re cruel, Crow Armbrust. How dare you do this to me. How dare you.”

Her eyes sting with tears. She’s so sick of crying.

Eventually, she sighs, and tucks the chain back into her pack; out of sight, never out of mind. Eventually, the awareness that she’s cold and naked hits, and she forces herself off of the ground to find clothes. Eventually, Sharon returns, and tucks her into her freshly made bed with a tenderness and love that she does not deserve.

“Goodnight, my lady,” Sharon says, but before she can leave Alisa grabs her hand. “My lady?”

“Wake me up tomorrow morning,” she says. “Even if I don’t want to. My mother is right. I can’t…hide in my bedsheets forever.” 

The pride that shines in Sharon’s eyes almost makes it feel worth it. “Of course, my lady,” she says. “I shall greet you bright and early upon the morrow.”

Alisa nods, and tries for a smile.

If nothing else, today has shown her that she cannot handle staying in this room with only her ghosts and guilt for company any longer.

It shouldn’t just fade with me when I go.

Sorry, Rean, Alisa thinks, as she drifts off. Crow, Millium…Dad. I’ve been letting you all down. If you were here, you’d all be yelling at me, right? I’d deserve it. I’m so sorry.

But I’ll be better. I promise.

After all, tomorrow is a new day.

(On the fifth day following the Great Twilight’s end, Alisa Reinford comes back to life.)