#have to redo the oakworthy one bc i got carried away lmao

[audiodramatist]

Hey…you also wanna do hardshine 29 🥺 you know cause you love me (I’m almost done with my own fic I can ask a lot of you)

29 ... as a promise

Hardwon dreams of dying.

It’s not always him dying, although sometimes it is, the feeling more a memory than a dream. Sometimes he’s the one who falls and doesn’t get up. Often it’s Gemma– losing her in Frostwind again and again. Sometimes as it happened, with the poisoned dagger. Sometimes she falls from the balcony and he can’t quite catch her. Sometimes she’s bit by Scarlett Montgomery, going pale and bloodless before his eyes. Sometimes she’s just there and then she’s gone, and he doesn’t know how.

And other times, it’s Bev, off the top of The Watcher’s tower or at the sword of Galad or the teeth of a giant crick-rot snake. It’s Balnor falling to a frost giant or an Angel of Thiala or a creature from Hell. But more than anyone else, it’s Moonshine.

He usually can’t tell what kills her. That’s the worst part. She’s alive and well, laughing with him at the crick, picking sticks out of PawPaw’s fur, and then she isn’t. He sees her cold and stiff and missing that spark, that Moonshine something that he would be able to pick out from a crowd if he were hit with both Blindness and Deafness simultaneously. And whenever it happens, he feels like he’s dying too. And he knows what that feels like.

Dying felt a lot like a world without Moonshine.

Hardwon wakes up in a panic, breathing heavy, tossing his light blanket off the bed. No sooner has he sat up than he hears a knock at his stump. Knocking isn’t crick habit. He knows who it is, and he knows she’s only knocking for him.

“Yeah, come in,” he says, and Moonshine does. She doesn’t seem alarmed by his state. She does seem worried, or maybe sad. She sits on the bed beside him.

“PawPaw was thrashing around something awful,” she says. “Figured something was up. He knows things, you know.”

Hardwon smiles. PawPaw doesn’t thrash unless Moonshine’s having a nightmare, and she sleeps so soundly that wouldn’t notice PawPaw doing anything unless she’d already woken up herself. So they were both having one of those nights. 

“What’d you dream of?” he asks as she settles in closer.

“Crickrot again. Got MeeMaw for good. You?”

Hardwon pauses. They all dream of death. He’d never told Moonshine how often he dreams of hers.

“Losin’ people,” he says, instead of anything more specific. “Same as you.”

“Alright, keep your secrets,” Moonshine teases. She leans her head against his shoulder, picks up one of his hands to play with. They sit in comfortable silence as she traces the lines in his palms, the edges of his fingers, the veins on the back of his hand. Hardwon breathes in the damp, dark smell of her hair and feels his heart rate go back to normal.

“Stay here,” he says at last. “Please.”

“One medium bed,” she says in response. He knows it’s a yes. They both shuffle down until they’re lying facing each other, hands still clasped between them. The stump’s lit only by the stars outside and one or two nannerflies that managed to get in, but Hardwon can still see every freckle on Moonshine’s face. Maybe it’s just memory. He’s known that face longer than he’s known his own. Loved it longer too.

“I dreamed… I dreamed you died, Moonshine,” he admits in a whisper. “I dream of you dying, like, more than anything else. And it’s– I’m scared, Moonshine. It scares me to be somewhere you’re not, even if it’s just a dream, even if I wake up right away. I don’t want– I can’t–”

Moonshine pulls his hand up to her mouth and kisses it. She kisses each finger, his thumb, his palm– he knows she’s aiming for this body’s short lifeline, the one she traced earlier and then extended, as if it continued all the way across his hand. The way she took this body from death and gave it to him, so long ago now that it's starting to feel like it's really his. At last, she places his hand just over her heart.

“I ain’t going anywhere, Hardwon,” she whispers. “I’m gonna be right here for as long as you’ll have me.”

“Always, then,” he replies, and it’s something they’ve said before, in one way or another, something they both know, but it feels important to say it now, like this. He moves close enough to wrap his other arm around her waist, her heartbeat still thumping against his fingertips.

“Always, then,” Moonshine repeats, and tucks herself under his jaw. Hardwon’s head fills with that perfect dirt smell again, and he kisses the top of her head.

“Love you, Moony,” he whispers, and hears her hum in answer. Then, a second later, she’s snoring lightly, and he falls asleep soon after.

He doesn’t dream at all.

[kiss prompts]