Work Text:
The first time Diana sees her, it’s in the shadow of a Rakkor elder. Through the crowd that gathers around the pair, Diana stares transfixed. She hardly hears the words that are exchanged—something about a trial, entrusting her to the care of the mountain, touched by the sun—the young Solari girl presses close against her mother. The girl can’t be far from Diana’s own age; she stands about as high. She holds herself with a kind of fierce grace and the light of the midday sun weaves through her hair in a glistening dance of deep, golden auburn. Diana pulls tighter the hood that hides her own hair. The girl turns, as if she feels the press of Diana’s gaze and their eyes meet. She smiles.
Diana feels as if the day has suddenly dimmed in comparison.
-----
Her name is Leona, Diana later learns, and her laugh is even more beautiful than her smile. There is a fierceness to her but it is a gentle and protective one. When a group of boys catch a baby bird, it is Leona who chases them away with a stick and sobs into Diana’s shoulder when the tiny creature dies in her cupped hands. After that, Diana hardly notices the poorly-hidden whispers and sneers the other children send her way. They attend their ritual classes together, study their lessons along the banks of the river in the gentle heat of springtime afternoons that seem to last eternities. Leona tells her stories of the Rakkor, teaches her the war songs and the lullabies, and sometimes when they stay out till the last of the day slips behind the mountains Diana will look up from Leona’s lap and watch the way her eyes sparkle with reflected light; wonder if, perhaps, she is the one who does not belong here.
-----
The years are good to her friend. Leona grows tall and strong, all curves and tanned skin and hair like burnished silky copper. Diana can’t help but hate her own small form; her knees are knobby and she’s far too skinny. Her hair is still the same lifeless gray that it’s always been. But to Leona, she is beautiful. When they take up their weapons on the practice field it feels as if they are dancing; sword on shield on sword clashing in triumphant bursts of steel and bubbling, ecstatic laughter. Diana finds within the blade a part of herself she hadn’t known was missing. On the last night of the summer solstice they spar and when they finally halt in perfect, equal stalemate Diana looks at her friend; eyes alight and with a sheen of sweat along her brow, mouth curved in a shaky breathless laugh and kisses her.
There is a pause, a beat in which Diana’s very heart threatens to crash from the heavens to which it had soared—and then Leona kisses back again and again as the sun sets into blissful twilight.
-----
She hadn’t meant to see the writing on the wall but when she happens across the ruins of a shrine overtaken with twisting foliage she feels an inescapable draw to the strange symbols that decorate the cracked stone. Not quite the sun, but similar…the moon? Her eyes find words carved into the rock face, weathered by the elements and the passage of time but there is one she can decipher: Lunari. She says it aloud, feels the rightness of it. The word eats its way into her soul and fuels her secret, furtive search of the records that lay hidden deep in temple libraries. She takes her knowledge to the elders and stands tall for the first time in her life as she challenges their beliefs. She is Lunari and they will respect her culture and answer for its destruction—
Only they do not, and her world comes crumbling down faster than she could ever hope to gather up the pieces. Leona watches from the crowd and it’s her face, eyes wide with distrust, that truly breaks Diana’s heart. She would never belong here.
-----
Years of running and it comes to this. Leona stands above her with all the blazing might of the sun that sets behind her head and wreaths her in its radiant corona. How fitting, Diana thinks bitterly, that she should meet her end at the hands of one who had so long ago set fire to her flesh in ways she never dreamed were possible. She clutches at her useless arm and feels blood begin to trickle through her fingers. Her own blade lies just out of reach, but Diana knows that even if she held it she could never hurt her. Leona’s eyes are cold and piercing as she lifts her sword to point at Diana’s chest, but the Lunari’s gaze does not waver. She will not beg for mercy.
“Will you renounce your ways, heretic?”
The warmth in her voice is gone; cold and clear Leona’s question hangs in the air between them. The word makes Diana flinch with a pain more acute than her wounds. “No.” Leona's blade is trembling now, poised to strike, and her stony mask falters, “Please, Diana” she says gently, desperately—
But the words only serve to fuel Diana’s rage. “Never,” she spits from between gritted teeth. Eyes brimming with tears that glisten in the fading light, Leona raises her sword.
Diana’s last thought is of a golden girl on a bed of summer flowers and a life she would never have.