One Last Wish
Ruby found herself out in between the restored standing stones, feeling the gentle breeze ruffle her hair. Lapin's teacup was just in front of her, where it had stood for the last four years.
It was Ruby's 24th Saint's Day and she could hear the celebrations of the feast behind her. She had returned to the castle months ago and the queen had celebrated her first Saint's Day back from her two years travelling with the Swirling Sisters with much fanfare.
But Ruby didn't feel like celebrating. She never did on this day.
All she could do was kneel there, tears streaming down her face as she tried to block out the echoes of the revelry.
She stayed there as the noise died down. She stayed there as the temperature dropped and she stayed there as the light slowly faded from the sky.
Things had been better since Saccharina had become queen, better than even before Emperor Uvano had died. Candia's magic was thriving, Saccharina was a good queen, who listened to Ruby and Theo as her main advisors and their alliances with the other nations were stronger than they'd ever been. Her mother was a good empress, even if she wasn't happy, and her father had finally stepped up to shoulder some of the responsibility. Together, they presented a strong leadership for Calorum and held in place a firm peace.
But it felt like it was all too late.
She felt the magic coursing beneath her skin, the shadows calling to her and surrounding her and Ruby hated it.
She'd studied the Sweetening Path, she followed Liam's example a drew power from the Hungry One and the Bulb, but she had never been able to get rid of the shadows that clung to her, that surrounded her. She'd given herself so completely to the Hungry One after… that, that she wasn't able to extract herself. She couldn't find balance.
This wasn't how she'd thought magic would feel like. This wasn't what she wanted.
She wanted…
Well she only wanted one thing and she would never get it, not with all the magic, all the wishes or all the power in the world.
So Ruby reached deep inside herself.
She didn't want this power. She had no desire to touch magic. Not when it can't do anything to save the person that she'd loved most. None of the studying, none of the spells and none of the power in the world had ever been able to fill that void.
In the end she was useless.
None of her skills, none of her tricks and none of her pathetic power could do anything.
She loved Saccharina and she loved the joy that both she and her sister had been able to bring to Candia, but Ruby just… couldn't handle the magic anymore. Not when every time she touched it, she was reminded of her greatest failures. Her ignorance and her immaturity as she grew up and her powerlessness as Jet's light went out.
So she found that spot inside her, the one that pulsed with magic and she squeezed, trying to tear at it.
She threw away the shadows, ordered them to dispel, sobbing as that thing, that ball inside her connecting her to the sources of magic in the world, slipped through her fingers.
Liam had called that ball change. The only path they could take between the two opposing forces that dictated the world. He claimed that they needed to find a balance between the Bulb and the Hungry One, creation and destruction. They could and should draw power from both and move forward to improve the world.
But Ruby didn't care.
She didn't care about anything.
Annabelle had spoken of duty and walking away from it and knowing that the world would be worse off for abandoning it but Ruby didn't care.
She couldn't.
She would still be Saccharina's advisor, her loyal sister who listened to the whispers to search for betrayal, but she could no longer bare to use magic anymore.
Theo and her father and her mother and Cumulous and even fucking Liam talked of moving on, of the hurt fading but it didn't. It never did. Nothing she ever did could stop it.
Jet was dead and she was never coming back.
And ever since then, Ruby's chest had hurt.
It had hurt like someone had reached inside her and torn her heart in half and then just left it, bleeding and bleeding but not dying, never enough to die. Only enough for every breath, every moment to be agony.
Ruby just wanted it to stop.
She wanted Jet back.
She wanted to hug her sister
Just one more time.
But she couldn't.
Jet was dead and they had won and everyone was moving on with their lives.
But Ruby was stuck here.
Suspended in this one moment for the rest of eternity.
A pulse of life and a snap and then the pain.
Her sister screaming at her to run.
Her locket shining brighter for a second and then going out.
So, Ruby was done.
There was nothing left for her to do and she now had no use or desire for any of the supposed gifts she'd been blessed with.
She tore the tie out of her hair, one hand digging into her head and the other clutching at her chest as she continued to attack that thing inside her.
Her body shook with sobs as her jabs slipped off it.
She needed it gone. She couldn't bare this any longer.
And then she felt something inside her break.
Like an open dam, something scorching hot and burning cold spread through her body.
She felt it pass her, where she was focused on her connection, and she was forced to withdraw or be destroyed by this icy lava.
It crashed around the orb of power and submerged it.
There were a few seconds where Ruby was still, paralysed by this new pain.
And then she felt the ball start to dissolve, and, as the membrane keeping it in disappeared, power and magic bled out, mixing with painful thing that Ruby realised was the remnants of her soul, her broken, torn soul that had given up.
As they hit, Ruby's vision whited out and she felt herself collapse against the ground, her body cradled within the standing stones, where Lapin had come so many times to commune with the Sugar Plum Fairy. It felt like lifetimes ago.
Her magic, which she'd devoted to the Hungry One mixed with the light of the Bulb and just for a second, she thought she could finally feel what Liam had talked about. That balance. That change.
But Ruby didn't have time to appreciate it as her awareness rapidly slipped away from her and darkness started to take over her vision.
Her heart lurched, panic flooding her veins. She hadn't meant to do this! She'd just wanted to stop feeling the magic. But now that she had done it, she could not undo it. Of course she would crumble before magic did.
This was just one final, stupid, thoughtless action after a life of naivety and foolishness.
As she felt herself fading, she spared a thought for her mother.
Her beautiful, smart, overbearing, impossible mother.
She should have listened to her.
She wished she'd just listened, all those years ago.
Neither of them had understood. No one would explain why they'd needed to know all that. They'd just been told that they'd had to and, for them, it hadn't been good enough. They'd been to young, too naive, too sheltered to understand. And now Jet never would.
She wished they could have. Listened. Learned. Been stronger.
She wished to hear her sister laugh one more time and she wished to see her wave her sword and she even wished to sit beside her as they listened to yet another one of Lapin's or Theo's or their mum's lectures.
She wished for more time.
-------
Ruby came to in a bed.
A very familiar bed.
She hadn't slept here in so long but she would always remember it.
The sun filtered through the window, warming her old room.
Her room!
She sat bolt upright, staring straight through the wide opening between the rooms. She and Jet had destroyed the doors separating them when they were nine and kept wrecking them until her mother gave up fixing them.
Jet.
Her twin was sitting on the edge of her bed, cross-legged and grinning as she practically vibrated in spot.
“Hey Ruby! You’re finally up! I’ve been awake for ages. I know mum said we could go wake her up as soon as we were awake but I wanted to wait for you, it’s your Saint's Day too after all and you should be able to sleep if you want to.”
Ruby frowned. "Saint's Day?"
Jet's grin widened. "Don't tell me you forgot silly!"
She leapt of the bed, bounding over to Ruby and tackling her.
"Happy 14th Saint's Day, Ruby!"