Title: The Last Rittevon
Rating: PG (for death?)
Summary: Imajane. And death. Because she is the last Rittevon, and sometimes there is such a thing as sympathy for the devil.
Disclaimer: Not mine, Imajane is Tamora Pierce's intellectual property.
A/N: This is basically just a stream-of-consciousness before Imajane dies, because canon never did show us Imajane's last moments.
They say that before you die your life flashes before your eyes. Well, Imajane has always been different from others.
Standing on top of the railings on her balcony, all she can see is the dead and the dying (how ironic, it is as if history is repeating. She too has seen the maps of the rebel's behaviour, history is repeating).
Her gaze shifts as movement catches her eye. Just as she thought, the gate is opening. The traitor, she thinks, but she couldn't muster up any rage. It is as if she has gone numb, her emotions icing over like a true ice queen (she isn't stupid, she knows what the people call her; Ice Queen, Stormwing. She's heard them all) until all that's left is a hollow spot in her breast, reverberating with the words that the Traitor (Taybur, but she won't soil herself by thinking his name) had uttered before he locked her up (in her own castle, how dare he?).
Rubinyan has fallen.
A part of her (the part that had willingly stood at the altar and spoke the wedding vows before a priest) refuses to believe it. Not Rubinyan, (he had always seemed to her to be larger than life) not dead. But the practical side of her can't help but scoff at the naïve thoughts (she has stopped being a girl child long ago). Rubinyan wouldn't have given up without a fight, and the fact that the gates have opened show that he had lost it.
Through the fog wrapped around her emotions, she feels weakness stealing up on her. But she can't give in; she is a Rittevon after all.
The last Rittevon.
As if summoned, she views them in her mind's eye. First her father, paranoid and insane through fault of his own, he was a fool and coward (nevertheless, the Copper Isles were at something approaching peace under him). Then Hazarin, a glutton for anything that can be eaten or inhaled, the Isles wouldn't have lasted long under him anyway (but he never liked the court games that were their birthright as children of the ruling house). Next is Dunevon… (A child, he was just a child; maybe even her child if she had been content with regency). She thrusts the images from her mind; any of them would have done the same! (Would they?) A Rittevon doesn't feel guilt, if they did they would never have lasted as rulers of the Isles (then why does she feel so awful?).
She looks down; the ground looks so very far away. She looks up, the veils and pennants that represents Mithros and the Great Goddess are shrinking rapidly, while the globe of flashing light that represents the Raka Trickster God (Kyprioth, but she won't soil herself by thinking of him either) is still growing. They're losing, she muses as numbness stole over her again (They've lost).
She looks at the ground again.
Rubinyan has fallen.
She jumps.
They say that before you die your life flashes before your eyes. Before Imajane dies, the deaths of her family flash before her eyes; and her involvement in them.