Like Any Other Day (Lucien)

A/N: See this video for the accompanying music.

Grief can be a funny thing. Some days it is overwhelming and hangs over one like a heavy wool blanket, seemingly inescapable. Other days it is more elusive, a hidden enemy waiting for a time to strike when least expected when one is going about their day. Today, while in some ways it feels like any other day, at times feels like someone put an anchor in my chest, weighing me down with an invisible mental weight. I don’t come to Cloud Ruler Temple very often, but for some reason I decided to pay a visit and quickly found it was a good thing I did. I don’t think Baurus has completely processed what happened to Martin, I don’t think anyone has, really. Does he admit it? Of course not, but assassins are trained to be perceptive, and I know the stubborn agent well enough to see through his mask of happiness. I’m dead, not stupid, after all. Seeing the temple for the first time without a certain former priest in it feels strange. I find Baurus standing silently staring at the door to the west wing bedroom where I had found him so many times before standing watch day and night. He may be the youngest member of the emperor's guard but he is without a doubt the most loyal of them all.

Finding Jauffre alone in the library nearly makes me cry, if I even can cry anymore. Issy is nowhere to be found, having gone almost completely off the grid since the official ending of the crisis. Last I checked she was doing some kind of pilgrimage for the strange prophet that showed up in Anvil who needed help. Jauffre gives me a silent nod of acknowledgment before going back to his writing. I think about asking him what it is he’s writing, but keep the question to myself- it’s most likely something I don’t want to hear. The other blades are sparse around the temple, a few I hear downstairs in the barracks, and there are the four stationed outside, but the rest seem to have been at least temporarily reassigned. It is like any other day in the fortress, and yet not. I’d brought my guitar along, having picked it up from my own fort of sorts when searching for signs of life from Issy and finding one of the many empty tables in the vast great hall begin to unpack it.

You would think a trained assassin would process grief quickly, though I suppose that’s why there’s a reason between cold-blooded killers and bloodthirsty murderers. I may be able to kill effectively, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its own effects on me. Having tuned the guitar I begin to play a song I hadn’t heard in years, but for this time seems fitting. “Into a dream through thoughts, don't travel too far, you won’t find the truth anywhere.” First my thoughts go to Issy, seemingly lost in an eternal unending nightmare searching desperately for answers. “I am with you like any other day. Lonely in your world I will come to find a place.” Amidst the grief and loneliness we will reunite again, just like any other day. “Wounded love full of doubts. Thinly condensed heavy baggage in the chambers of the heart.” My thoughts then turn to Baurus, and the emotional toll of losing not one but two emperors under his personal protection. Was there anything he could have done in the end? No, initially there were too many mythic dawn agents and not enough of the guard to hold them off. With Martin he had even less of a choice, Martin being stubborn yet courageous up until the very end.

“A hungry crow comes back to the same place, knocking on your door again, as the day weighs on me.” I think of how empty the temple is, looking around, the only other sounds being the fire, the occasional cough, and the first birds of spring outside the large doors. “Come closer and let the sun rise together with you. Good night, the moon lights up. Let it love you endlessly.” My thoughts turn once again back to Baurus, and the many days of guarding day and night he did without a word of complaint, and watching the sunrise together on the rare visits I would make here while still alive. “Unavoidable rich imagination, empty days with no clear truth or meaning pulls a green stalk into the mouth, pulls another slice in time to heal. Come close…Come close…” Whether through delusion, imagination, prayer, or simply time I think we will learn to live with the grief, and to heal. Having finished, I get an idea and go to pay a visit to Martin's unofficial grave, placing a stone in memoriam next to the statue and talking ‘to him’ for a few minutes, though wherever he is I doubt he can hear me quietly talking to the piece of stone in the snow as twilight falls and darkness sets in. The grief is still there, but that strange and funny feeling will eventually fade and acceptance will take its place. Life will go on, like any other day.