[Fic] death be not proud [Edchel]

[thecutdiamond]

Prompt: Edchel, Death be not proud, 55
Song: Alchemy- Kyer England.
Summary: Edgar wasn't the only person Rachel lost, and eventually that burden takes its toll.

“I hope that you get everything you want.”
“And I hope you get everything that you deserve.”

They start to reconcile after she recovers from Henry Givenchy almost killing her. It's a sudden thing, rather like the way they ended. One minute they pointedly ignore each other's presence, the other they're suddenly taking again. She isn't able to pinpoint the moment where it all changes.

In spite of the development, it isn't the same anymore. He's most certainly seeing Argine now and she's all but decided outright that she hates the vast majority of the male gender. There are no more nights of the two of them slipping away to the park together or even casually strolling side by side in the daylight hours. There's just the quiet switch from cold indifference to easy neutrality. She's both grateful and mournful for all they've lost, can't help but wish for a time machine so things could go just a little bit differently.

It hurts to know he's getting married to Argine, and even though she's grateful for the invitation she can only make it to the door of the church before she flees again. It hurts even more when she learns of the child the two of them are going to have. Those few years they move closer back to the cool indifference than the neutrality again, but when she realizes how much she loves the little one it's a step forward in fixing things. It says a lot to the both of them that she can love the child that could've been hers.

The world spins on its axis when he dies. All she can think is that they never properly got to apologize to each other. The first few days, she feels a bit like she's the one that died and she honestly isn't sure how she manages to get up to face each morning. Still, she doesn't cry. She's a Diamond and that simply Isn't Done.

It's years before she allows herself to grieve. Long after Edgar and Ophelia are cold in the ground, shortly after Andrew and Lindsey are, she finds herself alone on a parapet at the outposts and is struck with such a sudden wave of missing him that it forces her to her knees. There and only there, under the sight of vast night sky and nothing else, does she allow herself to weep for everything and everyone she has ever lost.

The quiet sobs wrack her form for what feels like days, but when her tears are finally spent, she rises with the acceptance that while she can't change the past, she can change the future. For too many years now, she has lived like a ghosts of those she had lost and those she had killed. For too many years now, she has lived like a cracked reflection of the woman she would have (could have) should have been. For too many years now, she has lived in the shadow of death. It's not the sort of life anyone she had lost would be proud to know she lived.

It's not a life she's proud to know she lived.

So she gazes into that infinite night sky and promises herself to be grateful for what she did have and to let herself grieve for what she no longer did. Death would no longer have its proud hold on her. She deserved better than that. The people she had loved and lost deserved better than that.

Edgar deserved better than that. And she had always hoped that he would get what he deserved.

Originally posted here.