story: the gravity of tempered grace (the imperial story)

[tiny_ninja]

Title: The Gravity of Tempered Grace
Fandoms: Original Work - The Imperial Story
Characters: Anitra Lambazzia, Vidal Florentine
Pairing: implied Anitra/Andros
Rating: Gen
Summary: A missing scene from Book 2: Phoenix. Vidal checks on a grieving Anitra.
Notes: Written for getyourwordsout Yahtzee challenge, with the prompt: lacuna.
Word Count: 1965


Waves lapped against the shoreline, a quiet soundtrack to my restless thoughts. I curled up inside the hollowed tree, my feet hanging a few feet from the ground, and stared. Moonlight reflected off the water, casting the island in ethereal shadows.

It was a beautiful hiding place. But that was all it was. The war raged elsewhere, and my family chose to run away from it.

My chest tightened again. I breathed past it, resting my head against the bark. At this time of night, I ought to be asleep, like the rest of the house. I hadn’t slept a decent night since the Great Raid destroyed our village, putting us on our current path.

And I definitely didn’t sleep knowing Andros was never coming home.

He was my bound Warrior, my other half, my everything. I couldn’t remember a time in my life when he hadn’t been there. Six months had passed since the Raid, since Andros sacrificed himself so we could escape Imperial capture. The grief still hung over me.

It should have been me. We should have fought together, and died together. How was I supposed to go on like Andros had never been there in the first place?

“I figured I’d find you out here.”

I jumped, almost falling out of the tree. A few feet away, one of my fathers, Vidal, leaned against another trunk, hand propped on his hip. The island had been good to him, his skin warm and tanned, hair growing out into dark curls cropped close to his head. Even in the darkness, ice blue eyes watched me.

Sighing, I slumped back into place. “You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you,” I grumbled.

“You didn’t take a weapon.” Vidal shrugged. “If you’re going to be alone out here, you should be armed.”

“What’s the point? No one’s found us here.” If the Imperials attacked, I knew what I’d do now. I would defend my family, if only so my little brothers never needed to fight.

I no longer fought to defend myself.

“Eventually, they will.” Vidal spoke with such resigned certainty. This war had dragged on for decades, since his own youth. Maybe there would never be an end. “We need to be prepared.”

Pulling my legs in, I rested my chin on my knees. “You sound like Papa.”

Vidal smiled, nothing more than one corner of his mouth tilting upwards. “Because he has a point,” he agreed. “We won’t be here on San Mona forever.”

“Certainly feels like we have been.” I closed my eyes. “Are you going to tell me to come inside?”

He moved closer, hands loose at his sides. “No.”

“Why?”

“Your mother worries about you. Even Papa does.”

I snorted. “Papa’s decisions put us in this mess in the first place.”

Vidal tilted his head, but didn’t contradict my words. In those last few moments when we fled Petro, my fathers disagreed on our course of action. In the end, it cost Andros his life. “Grief,” he murmured, “is an emotion that is never conquered. I would know.”

“Did you lose someone too?” He was one of the founders of our faction. We’d lost Warriors before. It just hurt more when it was my Warrior.

“In a way. Not all losses mean death. Sometimes that’s worse.”

“Who was it?” The words were out before I could stop them. “Never mind. You don’t have to tell me.”

His eyes closed. His shoulders shuddered as he drew a deep breath. “My father.”

Turrel. The man who welcomed us to San Mona, allowed us to stay in his summer home, who set my broken wrist after the Raid. I ran my fingers over the once-shattered bones. “He let us come here,” I whispered.

“We had nowhere else to go.” Vidal shook his head. “If we did, we would not be here. We fought about it, Papa and I.”

Wakka Lambazzia, the man I called Papa, was terrifying when he was angry. Vidal was one of the few who could stand up to him. “Was he for or against your dad?” I asked.

“For. I was the one who didn’t want to come.” Vidal shook his head. “My father disowned me for choosing a different path. In the early days of the war, we could have used his help, and he refused. We survived, but the cost was much higher.” 

He held his hands out in front of him. In the moonlight, I could make out the matching tattoos on the back of his hands, the Marks that denoted his roles. Vidal was the only person I’d ever known to possess both Marks, that of Warrior and Healer. I ran my fingers over my own Healer’s Mark on my left hand. It hadn’t been that long ago when I received it, dedicating my life to the Rebellion and defeating Cansolee’s Empire. 

“But we made it,” I whispered. “Most of us.” 

“Many more were lost than you know.” Vidal sighed. “Good people, all of them, and more will fall before this is over. We all have to do our part.” 

“Now you sound like Papa.” 

He cracked a smile. “We share the same views, just different ways of expressing them.”

“Yeah.” Wakka wanted to fight. The fact that he wasn’t, that we were hiding in a tropical paradise while the war waged without us, still made me want to vomit. The war had taken more from my family than anyone realized. “Doesn’t make any of this easier.” 

“Do you want to talk about it?” 

I closed my eyes, curling into myself. “No.” 

Soft feet moved over the sand. “Eventually, you’ll need to,” Vidal murmured. “It will help.” 

“The only thing that will help is Andros coming back.” The words were muffled, soft in the stillness around me. 

A gentle hand laid on my back. “He’s not coming home,” Vidal murmured. “I miss him too.” 

My voice cracked. Tears pricked behind my eyes. “There’s just - it’s a blank space where he should be.” Andros wouldn’t let us sit idle. Andros would want a plan. Andros would want to fight. 

And when he did, I would be by his side, Healer to his Warrior. Just as we should be. If I decided I also wanted to take the Warrior’s Mark, I knew Andros wouldn’t stand in my way.

I pressed a hand to my heart, breathing past the pain in my chest. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” I admitted. “It always hurts. It echoes and echoes and I can’t move past it.” 

Vidal’s arm slid around my back, pulling me into him. I clung to him, resting my face against his chest like I was all of seven years old again. “No one is asking you to let him go,” he reminded me, stroking my short hair. “To forget him is to disrespect his memory. Andros is with the Gods now.” 

I sobbed. The Gods were supposed to be on the side of the Rebellion. They weren’t supposed to let things end up like this. The Great Raid took more from us than just our old village in the woods. “It’s not fair,” I whimpered.

“Of course it isn’t. It never is.” Vidal’s arms tightened around me. “In another world, a perfect world, we wouldn’t be here. You would be able to choose your own path and your own fate. But Andros knew what he needed to do.” 

“No, he didn’t.” I could have helped him. I could have saved him. 

“Anitra.” Vidal’s other hand stroked my hair. “We couldn’t have gotten out of Petro if someone hadn’t stayed to cover us.”

“It shouldn’t have been him.” I shook, unable to stop the tremors wracking my body. “It shouldn’t have been anyone.”

“We could have all died,” he whispered. “I already thought I lost Papa and your mother once. I can’t bear the thought of losing any of you.” 

I squeezed my eyes shut. Tears flowed freely, but the words stayed trapped inside my heart. I would have died at Andros’ side, I thought. I would have fought until my last breath. Instead he died alone and I don’t know how to go on without him.

Vidal’s hand never stopped moving against me. Nor did he let me go, even when my sobbing slowed to sniffling. “Grief,” he murmured, “isn’t something you simply forget. You carry it with you, until eventually it gets easier to carry.” 

I drew a ragged breath, then another. “What if I’m not strong enough to do it?” I whispered.
 
“You are.” His confidence never wavered. Vidal kissed the top of my head. “Whatever happens, you are our daughter. You’re strong enough to do whatever you put your mind to.” 

The only difference now was that I didn’t care. Getting from one day to the next was hard enough. Knowing the war was out there and we weren’t helping was worse. “Okay.” What else was I supposed to tell him?

Only then did Vidal pull back, pushing my hair out of my eyes. “That’s my girl,” he murmured. “Do you want to come inside?”

Wiping at my eyes, I shook my head. “I think I’ll sit out a little longer. I was watching the stars before you came out.” A white lie, but it was almost true. 

Vidal paused. I waited him to call me out on it. When he didn’t, I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. “It is getting late,” he conceded. “If your mother wakes up, she’ll make you come to bed.” 

“In which case, I’ll listen.” I didn’t want her to worry either. My mother, Rosaria, had suffered enough in the wake of the Raid. I refused to make it worse.

He stepped back, removing the blaster from his hip. In one smooth movement, he flipped the weapon around and offered it to me, grip first. “Just in case,” he said. 

“Thank you.” I curled my hand around it. Even though I took the Healer’s Mark, I knew how to use a blaster. Given what I’d been through in the last six months, now, I wouldn’t hesitate. “Does this mean the next time I want to sit up out here, I can go into the weapons locker?”
 
“Just don’t tell Papa and put it back where you found it.” He pressed a finger to his lips, as if we were sharing a secret. “I’ll see you in the morning.” 

He started back towards the house, tossing one more glance behind him. “I love you, Anitra.” 

I gave him the strongest smile I could. “I love you too, Daddy.” 

With that, Vidal was gone. The stillness of the night waited for me once more. Sighing, I tucked myself into my hiding spot inside the tree again. Tonight, it was just my memories and I, playing over and over in my mind. Every time, I wondered if I could have done something different. If I could have stopped the Raid that destroyed our village or saved Wakka and Rosaria from being captured. If we could have planned our rescue so that way no one died.

In the end, it didn’t matter. We were alone out here on our island, waiting for the rest of the world to find us. The war wouldn’t stop. The Empire would continue to ravage the land and choke out what remained of our people.

But for now, I could defend my family. Andros would, if he were here. I curled my fingers around the blaster, tucking it against my side. I may have been Marked a Healer, but a Warrior waited beneath my bones.

I hoped I never had to prove it.

Instead I watched the waves lap against the shore, and waited for a reunion that would never come.