Okay, so a long time ago Cal wrote a piece about Leo dying and Cya finding his reincarnation. This is something of a companion piece.

Content warnings for major character death, AU, violence, more violence, angst, and orders.

If I die, she’d told him, all my other orders are null and void. Everything except this one: live.

If you were looking for bright sides, she only felt the first blow. The giant that killed her broke her spine first, at the neck. The second blow was a rowan sword through her throat. After that, he tore off her armor and stabbed his sword through her heart.

Do what you have to within your oaths and your morals to survive – and live. If you have to take revenge, I won’t order you not to.

Leo had an oath against killing, but he didn’t get to the giant in time either way. The giant was felled by a granny with a very large rolling pin and her granddaughter wielding a puddle of water and a couple live wires. They cut off the monster’s head with a hatchet, cut out his heart with a carving knife, and threw them at the enemy.
The rest of him they dismembered and burned. The ashes and bone chips they buried in hawthorn, in lead, in the most toxic waste they could find. They were taking no chances.

But don’t just stay alive. Live. That’s my final order to you, Leo. Live.

There was mopping up to do, but the battle and the war had been won, and Cya’s city would be safe, even if she was gone.

They buried her with honor, under a statue with her face on it. She’d planned for everything, but she’d left no orders for her funeral. The city chose that.

Stay alive, because if we come back – if we come back, I’m going to find you. And you’d better be there for me to find. We live forever; 100 years is nothing for an age difference. So live, so you’re there when I come for you.

Ten years was nothing; it was an eternity. It was a blink; everything changed.

She was still short and still young. Her power hadn’t blossomed yet. But she had walked across half of what had been Montana at one point, because the mink in her dreams told her she had to.

“My name’s Thistle,” she told the guard. “I’m here for the blond warrior.”

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