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Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
When she first sees him, high on his horse, sun on his head, she feels a calling she had never felt before in her life. It's not a godly calling, the totems in her hands do not speak to her. They never did.
(Perhaps their silence is their language. Perhaps their silence is a guide.)
It's not easy, leaving behind everything she knows and understands. It's not exactly hard, either.
It is an action. One that carries consequences, like expanding ripples in the surface of waters that only appear to be still.
Quinn makes her. Undoes her. Gives her as much as he takes before he proceeds to take more. The image of his power in the forest hasn't worn off, not yet. Maybe it will never leave. The words of her father are long buried in a place she's no longer sure she can reach.
She doesn't feel like she's wilting under the strain of a man like Quinn. She's young, smart and hungry for the more that comes with power and knowledge. Her totems, she still has them, but they are kept in a box inside a drawer she's never opened ever since she's locked it before the wedding night.
Faith has no meaning. Here her belief in her husband is what counts.
The forest and her father are the furthest things from her mind when they take him, her bundle of delicate hopes and expectations that is her child. Ryder, they have taken him, stolen him from her arms and she knows, she knows, this is Quinn's fault. He must know it, too, because by now they both agree it's clear his caring is fickle and capricious. Well, his caring for anyone else except his power and his position at the eyes of the merciless world that is always watching.
She opens the drawer. Grabs her totems. She doesn't cry in case someone hears her. She sits. And prays.
Nothing gold can stay.
Long gone is that first meeting, that first love, that first fire. She tends to her son, mends him back together, feels a part of herself shutter off when the boy of yesterday is truly gone from his young features. It is still her son, but he is also a stranger.
(She had asked the gods for mercy. She had said: bring him back to me, give me back my son. It's unclear if they even listened. If they heard well. Because before her are the physicalities of Ryder, but there are no signs of his youthful hope.)
The world is big, so big, and it has stepped on them. She never liked the concept of being small.
Here, a short glimpse of everything better:
Nathaniel standing there, in front of her, stars in his eyes and song in his voice. So bright with energy and dreams she thinks for a moment all the blood in their hands is gone.
"Lydia," he breathes her name into life and she smiles at him.
"I wish you the best of lucks, Nathaniel," she says, kissing his knuckles. Skin on skin with a tenderness that is strange to both of them.
They are both convinced they will never see each other again.
The story isn't pretty. It doesn't get nice.
Love has vanished, it might have never truly existed with Quinn because he does not know how to love humans. He adores power. He loves immunity. Those are the things he wants closest to himself.
This world made for men is making her edges sharp, cutting. Beatrice is not the first to fall for them. She will not be the last. There is no way to turn them dull now, softness doesn't live long in the Badlands. She has learnt this the hard way. Ryder is a shell of what he could've been, once.
Ah, but she is respected, she is feared and her voice is heard. No one doubts her place, no one questions her origins, and this too has proven it will never be stronger than her. She's made of a core that lets her endure. Resilient. Efficient.
Everything begins to pend from a single thread that gradually grows thinner. She is the only one who notices. She is the one making plans.
While around her men squabble for glimpses of glory and the Widow tests their dexterity, in her hands she keeps the heart of the issue that lets her compromise. It is why when she walks out, forced to do it, her head is high and her shoulders never curl. Humiliation doesn't sting as deep if she doesn't let it. They cannot harm her. They never will.
All roads are interconnected. The steps she once gave retract themselves, take her back to where she came from. The sting of her begging doesn't match the pain of rejection, of her son letting her be cast aside. The eyes of her father say with no mercy: You have been warned.
But she did not burn herself. She did not crash and collapse. The Badlands never ate her. It is the world the one that's changing. It is the currents of a new time. One with no escape.
You are not betrayed by wit and logic.
You are not betrayed by plans and chance.
You are unafraid to take what's yours and claim your place on these lands.
You are a predator they should fear. The one disguised as prey.
In your head there is the circular pride of your whole existence, in your face the eyes of a woman who is her own to command.
No one owns you. No one commands you. What they take is only what you offer. You keep yourself safe with always one backdoor open for your escape.
Maybe that gives you the fame of treason. Maybe that gives you the mark of betrayal.
All of that is both well deserved and unwarranted. For they knew very well you're not someone that can be chained.
Veil is much too sweet and tender and one look at her lets you know she's not made to survive. It is unfortunate because good souls do not deserve this faith, but the world holds no peace and no kindness - all she can do is keep the flame lit a little longer, hoping he will arrive to their rescue.
She digs her own grave but it's not her final one. Today's not her time for eternal rest. What fools they are, giving her weapons. They can't imagine her, a woman, so little, so weak, being the one striking back. A mistake they will never repeat, because the disturbed soil now welcomes them.
And maybe there is something to say about her and faithful meetings in forests. He arrives, sun in his veins, and gives her power. She's not to forget. When given chances, she returns in kind.
When a glimpse of all things better bathes her life again, she hesitates for the warmest of moments. Lingering traces and inner scars from her old lives fought and survived in the Badlands. But the glimpse shines brighter than her fears, those little things she never speaks of, and she thinks: It is time we have this.
Nathaniel blooms and brings tender light upon herself. Something very strange and unique indeed, something she never thought she'd have.
She learns about a woman, about a child. For the briefest of moments she entertains the thought of what could've been had she said yes all those years ago. Their own child. Their own freedom. No longer times of war.
The ghost of her Ryder's memory smiles at her in sadness with a little bit of understanding. The sound of Henry babbling in his crib brings her back.
She could've had that, she admits. But she does not regret this life.
At the end of her road, when she lays in her own blood among the dirt and the dark, she doesn't think of all she's done, her existence doesn't prance itself before her eyes. She lays there and smiles, thinking of the future she will never see.
All her surviving, all her cunning, all her plans, and at the very end (when all things climb faster and faster to their point of culmination) her undoing is her heart. Because she had ditched logic in favour of embracing hope. She had let herself live with her honest feelings. And she does not lament her choice.
Nathaniel rushes to her, his knees sink in the soil wet with her blood. He is warmth in a world that grows colder. Movement when stillness takes over her.
This, for the first time in forever, this is her love.
"Lydia," he shakes and she knows, she simply knows her last request will fall upon deaf ears. It's ok. That's ok. She understands him so very well.
"Toss your sword into the ocean," she still says, smiling and offering her last heartbeats to him. Her light. "Know that you have been loved."