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She falls, wounded, realizing with dread that the arrow has more than nicked her. And more than this - she realizes that she has now dropped her weapon, that she is useless in the fight, that the madding crowds of warring bodies are moving on without her, and she is left behind on the grass, turning the green to red, her vision lapsing from color to darkness.
She is vaguely aware of someone coming for her, especially since she expected no one to come for her, and of the distant call of “Tendo Maya!”
She is moving, maybe on horseback, maybe she’s even walking, with great coercion, or maybe she’s laying on the same patch of grass where she was left, but she might be lost in the fever dream of a poison arrow. After all, she is not sure of anything at all, really, except that her chest hurts like a vice is gripping it and someone is dripping acid into a hole in the center, and all of her limbs ache with a pulsing, sharp tendril of pain with each heartbeat. She wants to slow her breathing to slow each heartbeat to at least slow the beats of pain that course through her, but she lives in terror, anticipating each one, so she cannot calm down. It is an impossible quest.
Then there are the women. In her hazy fog of vision, she sees two women, but never at the same time. She might blink her eyes open to see the ethereal face of the Fairy Queen - Saijou Claudine, but she’s certain this is the hallucination of her feverish mind. She might see another woman with violet hair cut in a soft fringe, a gentle gaze, a cottage scene, and she wonders if this is the woman who took her away from the battlefield.
She has trained her whole life, fought in several battles already, always bearing the Fairy Queen’s banner, but now she understands the power behind the great and beautiful face. For each time she opens her eyes to that face, she feels more pain in her heart, more poison racing to her limbs, and she fears the touch. She catches a glimpse of hurt as she flinches away from the Queen’s hand tucking a lock of hair behind her ear, and she has to remind herself that this is a hallucination, she has not actually met Saijou Claudine. Such a deity would never make such a face and definitely not to one such as Maya.
She enjoys the cottage more. Each time she opens her eyes in the cottage, her pain seems to disappear. She feels as though she can move her limbs freely, and the woman who lives there will cook her delicious food. They look out the window onto old battlefields and revisit Maya’s prior victories. It’s nice.
She opens her eyes to the Fairy Queen, and her rib cage feels like it might explode. “I’m sorry,” she says softly, her lips close to Maya. “I know this must hurt.”
Maya focuses on the soft curve of nose to lip and lip to chin, and not on the stained bandages the Fairy Queen pulls away. “It’s getting better,” she assures Maya, “But it’s up to you now.”
Maya wonders what she means. She doesn't have time to dwell on it as she watches a tear fall from the Fairy Queen's eye, a tear cried for her, and she watches in awe as Saijou Claudine lays her cheek upon Maya's own. For one brief moment it's incredible, and then it's awful, as her heart rate picks up with the anxiety of having her Queen so close, pulsing poisonous pain to every limb with thrumming force, and her eyes roll back as she gives in once again to sweet unconsciousness.
When she again wakes, she is in the cottage, and she is invited to enjoy dinner with the other woman. She has been extending her visits here, because it feels so good to not be in pain. But as the woman takes the plate away, Maya catches a glimpse of the battlefield out the window, and she wonders, just for a moment, why she doesn’t know this woman’s name. “Who are you?”
“Mahiru,” the woman answers.
But it doesn’t fix anything. Maya still can’t make out a person from her. She is neither Man, not elf, nor fairy, nor anything Maya has ever encountered. “No,” she asks again. “Who are you?”
“I’m a valkyrie,” she says simply.
And Maya realizes that she knew this all along. Mahiru was here to take her soul, departed on the battlefield, away to Valhalla. She had been brave. She had done well. She had fought in the Fairy Queen’s honor. And it was nice here - there was no more pain, she was fed, she was able to see all she had done in life. She was ready, she supposed.
Living was just suffering, after all.
But just as she is about to step forward to take Mahiru’s outstretched hand, she pauses, thinking of the curve of a lip and the softest blonde hair and the Fairy Queen herself telling Maya that “it’s up to you now.” Her hand pauses, a few inches away from her body, and she pulls it back.
Mahiru looks almost resigned. “Are you sure? I can’t guarantee you’ll heal alright. And if you don’t die on the battlefield…”
“I understand.”
“Very well.”
Maya is sent away from the cottage, and wonders if she’ll ever see it again. She wonders if she’s making the right choice at all - to pursue an immortal being. But she’s lived her entire life for the Fairy Queen already, she supposes there was no decision to be made in the end.
“You came back.”
She’s surprised to see Saijou Claudine at her bedside when she opens her eyes again, but perhaps she shouldn’t be, as the Fairy Queen has been there every other time as well. She nods weakly, surprised when it doesn’t hurt as much as it had before. Perhaps her medicine has been working.
“Welcome back.”