where the { shadow } ends // ridley
Jan 26, 2020 23:49:55 GMT -5
Post by Stare on Jan 26, 2020 23:49:55 GMT -5
“Hey. It’s, uh - it’s me again.”
In the echoing stillness of the garden Ridley felt both awkward and unwelcome. Only spirits were meant to roam between the statues so late at night, but she had learned it was the only time she could visit without a dozen weighted stares following her every movement. She lowered the bouquet she’d brought slowly, as if afraid she would wake the dead if she was too loud. The pale petals were a sharp contrast against dark stone.
“They were out of roses this time, so I just got lilies instead. I hope that’s okay.” The mud of the still fresh grave pressed into her knees. She sucked in a shaky breath, shoving her hair out of her face and rocking back onto her heels. “Nothing to report this week. Most of my family hates me, but what else is new?”
A dry half smile danced on her lips as she tucked her hands against her sides. “It’s funny, because at first I was kind of mad. I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t good enough for them. I thought the crown would at least help, right? But then I watch the reruns, and I see what I did to you, and I just - ” Her voice caught, her smile widening slightly to fight against the choked feeling in her throat. She faced this confession every single time she came to his grave, but it never got easier. “I kind of hate me, too, you know?”
A wind swept through the garden. Ridley lifted her gaze and gently ran her fingers over the statue’s base. Torren Jaroux. If she closed her eyes she could almost imagine that she was wrapping her arms around him again, begging for a release from the guilt that would haunt her for the rest of her life. Murderers couldn’t apologize. The dead couldn’t forgive. “Maybe it’s a Victor thing. Maybe we all just hate ourselves.” She pulled her hand away. “I guess I could ask Kirito. I don’t know if he’d tell me the truth, though.”
Safe in the darkness, this was the only place where she could be so vulnerable. Everywhere else she kept on a careful armor of obsidian, designed to hold her together as much as it was to protect her from new scars. She held her own fury close, a simmering kind of hatred that kept the nightmares at bay. Even here she felt it flaring quietly, because even though she was the one had held the weapons in the Arena, those twenty three deaths weren’t her fault.
“I know none of this is poetry, but you said you’d see me in the garden, so I came. I keep coming.” White hot grief shot through her, laced with a hint of guilt and the ever-present rage that softened the sting. Ridley swore. “I miss you, Torren.”
Sometimes, selfishly, she wished she had met him before the train. But what would that have given her? More time, yet the same gruesome end. Just like Milo, and Delaney, and Charisma.
Every person who had given a damn about her had met their end in that Arena.
But she always smothered the hurt with fire. Her weekly visits to the statue garden were a way of adding fuel to the flames. It was a reminder of everyone she’d lost, everything she was owed. She refused to sit quietly and pretend that the crown was enough. It wasn’t. It never would be. What had been done to her was wrong.
(Sometimes she could still feel the chill in her bones. No one understood. The anger that had taken up residence in her heart was the only thing that kept her warm.)
Ridley didn’t go back to the Le Roux residence when she left the garden. Instead she let the ink-dark shadows envelope her, carrying her back to an old house that was almost crumbling under the weight of its age. All was silent and still and peaceful. She wondered if her blood still stained the floorboards inside.
Sparks emerged from the end of a matchstick in a small flurry of hissing light, chasing away the blackness and leading the way for a lone golden flame. The splintering wood on the outside of the house licked it up and the flame grew, hot and angry and all-consuming. Ridley staggered back out of its glow, shaking, grinning like a madwoman. It wasn’t long before the smoke was blotting out the stars.
The world would pay for her scars. She was finally, finally beginning to collect.
title: where the shadow ends, banners
