Work Text:
If Shelby is summer, Becca is autumn. Shelby is bright, and sunlight radiates from that warm face, and Becca is muted, warm in the way a roaring fire is on those cold nights. They compliment each other, one season bleeds into another, souls bleeding into each other over the years, you cannot have Goodkind without Gilroy.
At least, you couldn't.
But leaves fall off from the trees eventually, and Becca's had been strewn over the ground so far she thought they would never regrow. Yet they had, oh they had. It had taken so much, taken all those months of winter, covered by the cold snow, but when summer returns, flowers bloom so beautifully.
She'd had to be careful, never say anything that makes them think you're going to shed your own skin once more, you can't go back to that psychiatric ward . But she had made an exchange, careful footing in exchange for Shelby.
Shelter for that occasional touch of sunlight.
Summer healed autumn in the way nothing else could, with a gentle breeze and the allowance of rain, reassurance leaves still stood steadfast. This forest was not full of cracked bark, autumn was as whole as ever. The acts of a woodsman do not devalue the forest, they are simply part of the past, leaving the foliage to regrow in his wake.
It had felt like sunlight when Shelby had kissed her. Perhaps not the kind Becca was interested in, she didn't have the luxury of being anything but a good Christian girl anymore. Neither did Shelby. And Becca still cared, and autumn loves summer in its own way. And she tries to tell her, tries to offer that cracking firelight of hope she had waited for all those months until the glaring light of the sun had blinded her once more.
But doesn't autumn take from summer? Isn't that what Shelby was trying to tell her when she had yelled and told her all those awful things? Didn't autumn kill the light? Replace it with clouds and rain and nothing but barren forestry. Wasn't that all she was? Autumn was only comforting if you were waiting for its arrival, and maybe summer had never wanted to be cut short like this.
Autumn could never hold summer the way that it needed, couldn't nurture it with the right care. Summer was bright, but it could never stay forever, you could never appreciate summer if it was a constant. Two sides of one coin, but one side always rusts.
And hands pick up a pen, and she leaves what she can, hopes Shelby will be given it one day. Not now, not while the pain will be fresh. Autumn leaves a message for summer, rather than the other way around. It's not cruel, she ensures that. But it hurts, oh it hurts. But she makes herself finish it. A love letter to life, telling Shelby to find someone who truly loved her, a girl who made her happy, someone to hold her tight until autumn came once more. Because autumn always arrives, one way or another.
Summer suffers at the hands of autumn, and the cycle repeats. Until it doesn't.