Title: The grave preceded me
Fandom: High Rollers - Curse of Strahd campaign
Rating: T
Length: 410 words
Content notes: Set at the end Episode 25, Descent of the Dragonborn. Canonical character deaths. Title comes from Emily Dickinson's "Bereaved of all I went abroad".
Summary: "Maybe Shadow would have disagreed, would have insisted they honour the dead, but Shadow isn’t here, and Rose needs to save the living."

Looking wearily back up Yester Hill, Rose can see Dogsbody digging - a grave for Xiros, she guesses. Maybe she should help. Probably she should help. Shadow would have helped, Shadow would have known how it should be done, would have offered prayers for the two souls they’ve lost. Although maybe prayers would be of no use to them - Rose has no doubts on where those souls are bound for - but Shadow would have known the right thing to do.

Shadow would have known, but Shadow isn't here. The last thing Shadow asked of Rose was to bury her, and Rose failed. Shadow is gone, and now Xiros and Xiiki are gone… And they have only themselves to blame, Rose can’t help feeling, especially Xiros. Rose knows only too well the pain of losing a sibling; but she put an arrow in the throat of the monster her brother had become, and she buried him. She didn’t turn herself into a monster to bring him back. (But what would she have done, a tiny part of her asks, if she’d had a devil to make a deal with, instead of Shadow to guide her aim and her grief? Not this, she answers. Not this.)

There’s no time for any of this. They need to move, or they’ll all die here, not just the dragons. Maybe Shadow would have disagreed, would have insisted they honour the dead, but Shadow isn’t here, and Rose needs to save the living. Maybe she’s failing the dead, but she’s already failed Shadow; what’s another failure? She’ll remember them. If she ever makes it out of Barovia, she’ll try to find Xiros and Xiiki’s kin, and let them know what happened to them. That’s the best she can do for them now.

Under the shelter of Yesper’s invisibility spell, Rose makes her slow, exhausted way up the hill. Dogsbody seems to have finished digging by the time she reaches him, muscles straining now to move Xiros’s heavy form into the hole he’s dug. He looks inches away from death himself, covered in blood, and there are tears running down his face. Rose can’t bring herself to grieve for Xiros that much, but if there’s one thing she learned from Shadow, it’s the importance of support in grief; so she places a gentle hand on his shoulder, and sends what little healing magic she has left into him. She’s not losing him too. She’s not losing anyone else.