https://www.patreon.com/posts/fic-post-humous-61387018
SPOILER WARNING: The following vignettes take place in the hours immediately after the party leaves the Temple of Dox'An in Death2Divinity Season 1, Episode 19.
Later, Brine will say their flight from the temple was too fast for her to remember details. In truth, she can’t stop fixating on them: Gideon and Nakia, glowing like something ethereal; Winona in her ear, insistent and frustrated; Jastira, covered in blood and Morrow, jaw tight; the name Valeria, and the memory of the lost kinkiller blade; the abrupt scent of death upon climbing to the surface, then the sight of not one ship, but two; Adrielle insisting they need to return to Kyrthys, and Gideon firmly saying no. Adrielle goes anyway.
Then they’re back on the Copper Veil and again, Winona tries to speak to her, but Brine brushes her off and all but storms downstairs to her quarters. There are wounds to tend and courses to plot, but Brine isn’t equipped to help. Not tonight. She slams her door shut and locks it behind her, then hurls her dagger at the far wall with a loud, guttural cry.
Her hands are shaking, and the dagger sticks in the wall by just its tip.
The next one sinks in a full inch, centimeters above the first.
She doesn’t throw the iron-tipped dagger. That one, she puts on the end of the bed and stares at until her eyes start to cross. Then she plucks the other two from the wall, backs up, and throws them again.
Brine plays target practice on the wall until the temple is hundreds of miles behind them and she can barely stand. It doesn’t dispel the anger boiling her blood whatsoever — nor does it clarify any of what happened, any of what she heard, any of what she remembers from that night in Myriag City. She needs to talk to Gideon. She can’t yet, not tonight. But tomorrow, maybe.
When Brine falls asleep, she sprawls loose-limbed across the bottom of the mattress.
The whirring of the engineering room is the only thing that can overpower the thoughts racing through Nakia’s head. Her face is still flush from embarrassment: Jastira was the only one who could talk her down when her hands had started glowing as they boarded the ship. Gideon hadn’t even noticed — they had fled to their quarters the second they boarded the ship, and Current had played bodyguard to her before that. It was a grim frustration. The only person who could remotely understand what she was going through was closed off to her.
Does it matter? They’re dead and gone, and I’m not — and I need you.
Gross jealousy builds and burns in her throat, before she banishes it with another shuddered breath. For a second, she wonders what it would be like to have someone care that much about her. Her back is against the glass floor of the engineering room, world racing by beneath her, and her hands are resting above her stomach, counting the Arcaenic Deck cards over and over again in a fever.
Nakia had almost lost the cards. Her entire life’s work ripped from her hands in an instant. If Gideon hadn’t gotten them back... Shameful tears prick at the corner of her eyes. How had she been this irresponsible? If she hadn’t held back in the temple, this never would’ve happened. Jastira kept telling her to stop being reckless, but maybe she had been wrong. If Nakia had been ready, she wouldn’t have watched Jastira get stabbed in front of her, a casual discarding of her closest fam— friend. And that voice, that voice! It sounded so familiar, but jerk Gideon was too busy being sad about some other royal jerk to even confirm that the voice had been their—
Nakia sits up in alarm as she realizes her hands have began to glow again. Frantic curses spill from her lips as she pats her hands on her shirt like she’s trying to put out a fire. The only thing that douses her hands is when the door to the engineering room swings open, Nakia freezing like a startled cat before ducking behind one of the pylons. The tension leaves Nakia’s body as she catches sight of Lovey’s telltale overalls, but she stays perched behind the machinery to avoid detection. Jastira is the only person who has ever seen Nakia cry, and she’s determined to keep it as such.
“This just... doesn’t make any sense,” Lovey mumbles to herself, as she comes to stand in front of a set of panels toward the back of the ship. Nakia had noticed the panel earlier, charred and fried beyond a sense of repair. Evidence to Luceaux’s disappointment in Lovey for frying a portion of the ship to power her shield. “If it was going to fry anything, it would’ve fried the Mana Alterator in the command room... This seems like...”
Nakia can only catch a glimpse of Lovey’s hand brushing over the machinery as she trails off, a loving touch, before she balls her fists up at her side, letting out a frustrated exhale.