"Miss Anasthsia," Aurelius spoke with a voice that came out slightly muffled, as though the weight of what he was about to say had pressed itself against his throat before he could release it properly. "I need that territory back. It holds a very particular place in my life; it was the land where I grew up. I have my memories with that place.
The sincerity in his voice was quiet but unmistakable, carrying none of the performative emotion that people sometimes wore when asking for favors, only a low and genuine request.
Anasthsia looked at him steadily, and whatever playfulness she had shown before was entirely gone now, replaced by a serious and considerate expression. "I am sorry, you need to learn to move on, Aurelius," she said. "And this is not an empress speaking to you; I am advising you as an elder sister. You are free to visit the Aurelia territory anytime you want, but I cannot give it to you for specific reasons."
Aurelius pressed forward anyway, his tone reasonable and measured. "Come now, I don’t think you’re actually taking a loss here. There must be room to negotiate something equitable." He was appealing to her practicality rather than her sympathy, and he had clearly spent time turning this argument over in his mind before presenting it.
But Anasthsia shook her head slowly, her eyes holding his without any give in them. "A few days ago, someone visited me and told me something I haven’t been able to stop thinking about," she said. "They told me that fate is irredeemable and irreversible. That destiny is not yours to rule; it rules you, Aurelius."
She let that settle for a moment before continuing. "Forget about that land. Consider it as a lesson and carry it forward with you. It may feel impossibly difficult right now, but there will come a day in the future when you look back and understand why this had to be."
Aurelius shook his head, and when he spoke, there was no anger in what he said, only an honest thought that he clearly felt he was supposed to not hide from her.
"I’m sorry if this sounds rude, but what you’re telling me to do is somewhat hypocritical coming from you. You got your son back, didn’t you? You refused to move on when you were sitting in that underground cell for 15 years. You were consumed by the need for revenge, so much so that you swore an oath beneath the name of the heavens themselves, and then you broke that promise, and still the heavens forgave you." He paused, holding her gaze.
"You have no real ground to stand on when you counsel moving on, not when your own destiny has unfolded precisely according to your will."
He had expected anger from Anne on this comment and the normalcy between them to go down the drain. Instead, Anastasia laughed, and the calm that followed it was even more disarming than her laugh.
"It is all a matter of how you choose to look at a situation," she said, settling back slightly, her voice thoughtful rather than defensive.
"Perspective is everything, Aurelius, and I want you to know that I am not especially happy about my circumstances either." She folded her hands and continued.
"My oath consisted of two very specific conditions. The first was that I would witness the Light Church burn down with my own eyes. The second was that I would personally crush Winston’s head. Those were the exact terms." She gave the faintest shrug.
"As for the first—I said I would witness it burning. I never once said I would be the one to set the flame. As it happened, I was fortunate to have been so unspecific in the heat of my rage, because William had his subordinates burn down a great many of the Church’s establishments, and I did indeed witness it with my own eyes. And as for the second condition, after the public procession bearing Winston’s head was carried out, I was there in person, and I crushed what remained of it beneath my own foot. Thanks to my brilliant son, the conditions were met exactly as I had sworn them."
"The heavens did not forgive me a single concession."
She noticed the slightly lost look on Aurelius’s face, and she softened, shaking her head. "But none of that is actually the point," she said, and her voice dropped to a bit quieter.
"The point is that just like you, I have wounds that have not healed and probably never will. I lost the love of my life, and he is not coming back, and there is not a single day that passes where I don’t feel the absence of him somewhere in my chest. I have a son who is a grown man now, and I never got to be part of the years when he was becoming one. I never held him when he was small, never taught him the things a mother teaches her child, never stood in the doorway watching him sleep. William never grew up under the protection of his father’s shadow either."
She paused, and the grief in her face deepened. "I am grateful beyond measure to the Kaiser couple for raising him, and I mean that entirely. But there are moments when I wish desperately that none of what happened sixteen years ago had ever happened at all. And yet there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that exists in this world capable of turning back what has already been."
The room was very still. Aurelius listened without interrupting.
"I could return the Aurelius Province to you," she continued at last. "I am capable of it. But I don’t want to, Aurelius, and it is not out of cruelty or stubbornness. I made a promise to someone, a promise to see that you are taught a lesson that I believe is genuinely important for you to carry. That ashes do not turn back."
Aurelius’s eyes lifted with surprise. "Who was that? Was it my wife? Was it Gloria?"
Anasthsia did not answer him. She simply looked at him with an expression that communicated, with great patience and without a single word, that he should let that particular matter go.
He looked briefly disappointed, but after a moment of sitting quietly with it, something in his expression shifted. The bitterness faded away from his heart entirely.
He then just asked curiously, "But what if you are wrong?" he asked.
"What if ashes actually can be restored? What if the ones who hold on stubbornly, with every remaining fragment of hope, turn out to be the ones who had it right all along?"