#i love them I LOVE ARANNIE SO MUCH I CRY 😭😭😭

[stillresolved]

continued from here. / @uroborosymphony

Perhaps in another life, had they met earlier, Ara could have been Annie’s sister in all but blood- Choi Yuri, though a sickly woman, would have taken one look at her and considered Jung Ara her third daughter. Taken her in and told her all the things Jung Danbi had said about her weren't true. Not at all. Not that words alone have helped her, not that words of any kind would change the past now. But would it have made a difference for a younger Ara back then though, Annie wonders- could it have curbed the darkness, lighting the way for Ara?

“My…light?” Annie utters lightly, too lightly, with the voice of a wisp between the two of them. Did she even have one in the first place- unlike Ara, Annie wasn’t looking to change the world. She was never looking to be a revolutionary because she would have been content with working as a surgeon. Helping people. Giving Umma the financial stability and love she deserved all those years ago.

But life doesn’t discriminate does it? Neither does death. It didn’t matter if Annie was a stellar student, a promising surgeon on par with the rich medical students who expected their licenses and the title of general surgeon handed to them like the ivory spoons they already had. It didn’t matter if she had no intention of breaking any protocols and had no intention of making any waves. She only survived out of sheer luck, only survived in place of Havel because he had tackled their attackers, yelling for her to run. She only survived the water because Ga-ram happened to notice the air bubbles while passing by.

( It would have been better that way, she does not admit. Drowning. At least her head wouldn’t be so loud with the water in her ears. )

 She flinches involuntarily under Ara’s fingers, firm but warm, even though logically it makes no sense to do so. Annie knows vaguely of the blades and claws Ara unleashes, but she’s never seen them herself, let alone Ara in combat- Annie has only witnessed the aftermath. She sniffles, hands tightly wound around fresh bandages for Ara’s wound now. If they are the only anchor keeping Annie from covering her ears and drowning out anything and everything ( how strange that blades sinking into flesh and bone could be so loud- maybe that’s why they kept going, chopping Havel down piece by piece until it was only his head, the rest of his body in ripped into cubes and shapes with uneven and rigged edges- ). That was the only way to survive back then- if she couldn’t hear their voices, what they were saying about her, they couldn’t do anything to her, she could be safe or at least something like safe.

But Ara speaks and like an animal coaxed out of the den, Annie peers up between to wet bangs and maybe, Ara sees hollow eyes, but something small, something still alive if only by the skin of its teeth, peeks through. Ara speaks of ‘not right’ and the reds and madness so loud that not even the silencers can mute the voices- is that even possible? Even if people like Annie, mad people who they call no good, no good for anyone could band together, who’s to say that even if they could be heard, they would be believed? It feels like a pipe dream, this future Ara speaks firmly of as if it is an inevitability. Hands loosen around the bandages. And what feels even more like an impossibility is-

“Make them pay?” Annie repeats softly, carefully.

An option that Annie had never considered before. But perhaps that is why Ara turned to her life as it is right now- if the law would not give the people the justice or the mercy they need, then the people would have to take it for themselves. And if the law called them ‘criminals’ for it, revenge-seeking mongrels, well, the law only had itself to blame, didn’t it?

Revenge is only a darker shade of justice. 

( A darker shade of red. )

Something new creeps into Annie’s eyes. Is it hope? Or is it craving for revenge? Annie can’t tell. The color of god never made its hue all that obvious.

“How?”