03-01-2017, 01:03 AM
He thinks she sleeps, but she only pretends to do so to ease the guilt he feels – guilt she cannot understand. In all the world there is only him, always him, and in these last weeks, last days, there is nowhere else she would rather be. Knowing that his time was limited, their time together, she slept only when he did (fitful and interrupted) in the curve of his belly and with her head across his forelegs. It was easier for him to lay down, easier for him to hide the way his legs now trembled beneath him, hide the way he had become little more than a brittle leave battered at the end of a branch. So they rested often, always in a tangle so that she could soak in his warmth and press kisses to the deepest hollows and sharpest bones.
She was soft for him now, in a way that she had always been, but she made no effort to hide it from those who chose to visit. There was no sharp, no fury, no wild wrath. Only a small blue mare and the broken man she would forever love. It hurt though, to watch him fade, to have no way to slow it or stop it or trade her life for his. She would have, in an instant. He was her better in every way, he was the only good part about her. She knew, too, watching him fade, that the good in her faded too, the light he had placed and held there. It would burn out without him. How could it not when she was why he would die like this. She had known what it would mean to love him, had known it the day Victra was born and her feelings for her were so painfully strong that even she could not hide them with her stubbornness. She had remembered her grandfather, of whom the Chamber had demanded his heart. She remembered her father, of whom the Chamber had demanded his life. She had known then that the Chamber would take Killdare, too, if she chose to love him, chose to bind to him as she had. But she had always been selfish, always broken, and she had loved him anyway.
How could she ever live with this truth, this choice.
What would be left once it consumed her.
She feels his nose against her stomach and there is a smile on her mouth, soft and sad and every bit as broken as the both of them. He had done this often in the last few weeks, touched the roundness of her belly, a roundness that promised new life come spring. It soothed her somehow, this weight in her belly, the innumerable times he had traced the roundness with soft, dark lips. It was a small sliver of good, of normal, in an unraveling of time that otherwise felt like a nightmare. Before he can pull his nose from her belly, before he can pull away from her at all, she reaches out to touch her lips to his forehead. She brushes his forelock aside, dark and smooth – though not as soft as it had been, once – and places a kiss on the whorl of hair on his brow. “I love you.” She says again, a hum, a thrum, hiding the cracks in a voice he fissures beneath the weight of so much pain. It was something she had been reminding him of constantly, amidst kisses and touches and her head cradled against his chest. “I love you, always.”
Malis, he says, and she flinches because she can see it in his face, in the bottoms of his eyes, I have to go. She rises before he does, easy and graceful, and she doesn’t make any move to help him stand. Maybe it is selfishness, because there is nothing inside her that makes her want to hurry this along, maybe it is because she knows he will want to be strong in death just as he was in life. Instead her eyes are on the faint gold outline of the dark horizon, fixed there blindly until she feels his nose at her shoulder.
They walk in silence, away from the rising sun – though it follows them anyway along the crease of the horizon. The quiet hurts her somehow, but there is nothing to be said, and she knows how hard this trek must be for him already. So instead she is closer than a shadow at his side, blue and bruised and beautiful, with her nose possessively against the crook of his neck. Mine, is what she doesn’t say, what she has always said, mine. When they reach the beach he splits away from her and collapses with his back against rock. For a moment she hesitates, uncertain, and the feeling is so strange. But then she returns to him, laying down against his side opposite the rock so her ribs are pressed to his and her mouth can touch his forelegs and his chest, can travel along the hollow of his neck and up to a face that her lips have memorized effortlessly. “Killdare.” She says, but she has to stop because it is too hard to hide the brokenness from her voice. Instead she drops her head across his forelegs, her head against his chest, and finds solace in the rattle of lungs that still breathe, the faint hum of a heart that still beats.
Will you name them, he says finally, breathy and faint, struggling, so she lifts her head to run quieting lips along the tremors that grip his throat, If it is a boy, call him Knight and for a girl, name her Noble. Will you? He shifts, turns, and those pale green eyes find her face. She reaches out to him again, for him and for her, the act of doing something helped ease the terrible weight in her chest. Her lips find the curve of his cheek, the hard line of his jaw, and she smiles for him as she always has, soft and easy and openly affectionate. “I will.” She tells him, tracing shapes against the brown of his face. “Those names are beautiful.” They remind her of him, Knight and Noble, pieces of his memory and either one would perfect for a child of theirs, of his. “Our child will know you, too, Killdare. They will know your honor and your strength. They will know of your loyalty, and the fierce love you had for your kingdom and your people, the love that you have for your family. They will know you, I promise.” She meant to hide the pain from him, the sorrow, but it seeps through the cracks in her voice and in her face until she is brittle and bruised and shattered against him.
Don’t you dare leave me. Those eyes say, furious and broken, two shattered windows filling her mouth with glass. But even she is not so selfish so she turns from him, hides them, until they are empty again.
When the dawn finally catches up with then and sunshine peels from beneath the horizon, Killdare lifts his face to greet it. Beside him, Malis is only still, only quiet, only wanting to soak in his warmth and his bright before it is gone. While his eyes are closed, hers are stark and open and sharp against his face. They trace all the lines and hollows, planes of sharp bone beneath that smooth brown, and it doesn’t matter that she could trace him in her sleep, that every part of him will live forever within her. She still wants more because she is greedy. Malis? he says, and her focus slips back to his face, back to a pair of green eyes several shades lighter and softer than hers. But she is startled by what is looking back at her, by the intensity that had been lost when the world came undone. She knows in an instant that he is whole again, that he is only Killdare and not a stranger inside, and this makes everything so much better and so much worse. “Killdare.” She says before she can stop herself, breathless and aching, with her lips pressed urgently to his dark, fading face. Thank you, he breathes and at last it is okay to crumble, because this man knows her for her strength and her weakness, will not be afraid of the way she shatters like glass within his grasp, for such an amazing life.
He is gone before she can answer, faded beneath her lips until they fall from his cheek. The dark that creeps in is immediate. The pain, the ache, that crushing agony that threatens to rend her chest in two. Without his eyes to keep her anchored, without the rattle of his lungs to tell her that he is still there, still hers, she falls apart. She drops her head beside him, unable, unwilling to leave the body that was his. She knows there must be others who wait to say their goodbyes, others who followed their progression and kept their distance either out of respect or fear of what the small blue mare would do if approached. Let them come, she thinks, eyes closed and face pressed to a shoulder that was still warm. They must realize that she will not leave him because they do come, sometimes in clusters, sometimes alone. There are some she recognizes by scent (she lifts her head for none of them, not even when his body is stiff and cool and so, so empty), some who touch her shoulder before they leave again. She knows one of them is Victra, dark-eyed and wild, and she is glad that Killdare cannot see what she has allowed to become of their daughter.
Only when the last of them have come and gone does she finally stand and leave him, touching her nose to a cool cheek and smoothing his forelock down out of habit. She steps back and away, joining those who had stayed, and lays her flat gaze on Woolf, the mulberry stallion who had appeared only moments before. She is wordless when she looks at him – wordless because she knows that her nephew will already know the request she has for him, knows, too, that it is likely why he is here at all. She nods once, sharply, stiffly, and then turn her attention back on the body of the man who had been her everything. Woolf would pile the wood and start the fire, and when it finished burning there would be only ash left. Nothing for the birds to pick at, nothing for the sun and the air to rot. She had seen rotting bodies, and he deserved better than that. “Goodbye.” Is all she says, a whisper, faded and brittle. Then she settles into the black shoulder of the horse at her side, refusing to look up and find the red of those eyes lest she fall completely apart.
She was soft for him now, in a way that she had always been, but she made no effort to hide it from those who chose to visit. There was no sharp, no fury, no wild wrath. Only a small blue mare and the broken man she would forever love. It hurt though, to watch him fade, to have no way to slow it or stop it or trade her life for his. She would have, in an instant. He was her better in every way, he was the only good part about her. She knew, too, watching him fade, that the good in her faded too, the light he had placed and held there. It would burn out without him. How could it not when she was why he would die like this. She had known what it would mean to love him, had known it the day Victra was born and her feelings for her were so painfully strong that even she could not hide them with her stubbornness. She had remembered her grandfather, of whom the Chamber had demanded his heart. She remembered her father, of whom the Chamber had demanded his life. She had known then that the Chamber would take Killdare, too, if she chose to love him, chose to bind to him as she had. But she had always been selfish, always broken, and she had loved him anyway.
How could she ever live with this truth, this choice.
What would be left once it consumed her.
She feels his nose against her stomach and there is a smile on her mouth, soft and sad and every bit as broken as the both of them. He had done this often in the last few weeks, touched the roundness of her belly, a roundness that promised new life come spring. It soothed her somehow, this weight in her belly, the innumerable times he had traced the roundness with soft, dark lips. It was a small sliver of good, of normal, in an unraveling of time that otherwise felt like a nightmare. Before he can pull his nose from her belly, before he can pull away from her at all, she reaches out to touch her lips to his forehead. She brushes his forelock aside, dark and smooth – though not as soft as it had been, once – and places a kiss on the whorl of hair on his brow. “I love you.” She says again, a hum, a thrum, hiding the cracks in a voice he fissures beneath the weight of so much pain. It was something she had been reminding him of constantly, amidst kisses and touches and her head cradled against his chest. “I love you, always.”
Malis, he says, and she flinches because she can see it in his face, in the bottoms of his eyes, I have to go. She rises before he does, easy and graceful, and she doesn’t make any move to help him stand. Maybe it is selfishness, because there is nothing inside her that makes her want to hurry this along, maybe it is because she knows he will want to be strong in death just as he was in life. Instead her eyes are on the faint gold outline of the dark horizon, fixed there blindly until she feels his nose at her shoulder.
They walk in silence, away from the rising sun – though it follows them anyway along the crease of the horizon. The quiet hurts her somehow, but there is nothing to be said, and she knows how hard this trek must be for him already. So instead she is closer than a shadow at his side, blue and bruised and beautiful, with her nose possessively against the crook of his neck. Mine, is what she doesn’t say, what she has always said, mine. When they reach the beach he splits away from her and collapses with his back against rock. For a moment she hesitates, uncertain, and the feeling is so strange. But then she returns to him, laying down against his side opposite the rock so her ribs are pressed to his and her mouth can touch his forelegs and his chest, can travel along the hollow of his neck and up to a face that her lips have memorized effortlessly. “Killdare.” She says, but she has to stop because it is too hard to hide the brokenness from her voice. Instead she drops her head across his forelegs, her head against his chest, and finds solace in the rattle of lungs that still breathe, the faint hum of a heart that still beats.
Will you name them, he says finally, breathy and faint, struggling, so she lifts her head to run quieting lips along the tremors that grip his throat, If it is a boy, call him Knight and for a girl, name her Noble. Will you? He shifts, turns, and those pale green eyes find her face. She reaches out to him again, for him and for her, the act of doing something helped ease the terrible weight in her chest. Her lips find the curve of his cheek, the hard line of his jaw, and she smiles for him as she always has, soft and easy and openly affectionate. “I will.” She tells him, tracing shapes against the brown of his face. “Those names are beautiful.” They remind her of him, Knight and Noble, pieces of his memory and either one would perfect for a child of theirs, of his. “Our child will know you, too, Killdare. They will know your honor and your strength. They will know of your loyalty, and the fierce love you had for your kingdom and your people, the love that you have for your family. They will know you, I promise.” She meant to hide the pain from him, the sorrow, but it seeps through the cracks in her voice and in her face until she is brittle and bruised and shattered against him.
Don’t you dare leave me. Those eyes say, furious and broken, two shattered windows filling her mouth with glass. But even she is not so selfish so she turns from him, hides them, until they are empty again.
When the dawn finally catches up with then and sunshine peels from beneath the horizon, Killdare lifts his face to greet it. Beside him, Malis is only still, only quiet, only wanting to soak in his warmth and his bright before it is gone. While his eyes are closed, hers are stark and open and sharp against his face. They trace all the lines and hollows, planes of sharp bone beneath that smooth brown, and it doesn’t matter that she could trace him in her sleep, that every part of him will live forever within her. She still wants more because she is greedy. Malis? he says, and her focus slips back to his face, back to a pair of green eyes several shades lighter and softer than hers. But she is startled by what is looking back at her, by the intensity that had been lost when the world came undone. She knows in an instant that he is whole again, that he is only Killdare and not a stranger inside, and this makes everything so much better and so much worse. “Killdare.” She says before she can stop herself, breathless and aching, with her lips pressed urgently to his dark, fading face. Thank you, he breathes and at last it is okay to crumble, because this man knows her for her strength and her weakness, will not be afraid of the way she shatters like glass within his grasp, for such an amazing life.
He is gone before she can answer, faded beneath her lips until they fall from his cheek. The dark that creeps in is immediate. The pain, the ache, that crushing agony that threatens to rend her chest in two. Without his eyes to keep her anchored, without the rattle of his lungs to tell her that he is still there, still hers, she falls apart. She drops her head beside him, unable, unwilling to leave the body that was his. She knows there must be others who wait to say their goodbyes, others who followed their progression and kept their distance either out of respect or fear of what the small blue mare would do if approached. Let them come, she thinks, eyes closed and face pressed to a shoulder that was still warm. They must realize that she will not leave him because they do come, sometimes in clusters, sometimes alone. There are some she recognizes by scent (she lifts her head for none of them, not even when his body is stiff and cool and so, so empty), some who touch her shoulder before they leave again. She knows one of them is Victra, dark-eyed and wild, and she is glad that Killdare cannot see what she has allowed to become of their daughter.
Only when the last of them have come and gone does she finally stand and leave him, touching her nose to a cool cheek and smoothing his forelock down out of habit. She steps back and away, joining those who had stayed, and lays her flat gaze on Woolf, the mulberry stallion who had appeared only moments before. She is wordless when she looks at him – wordless because she knows that her nephew will already know the request she has for him, knows, too, that it is likely why he is here at all. She nods once, sharply, stiffly, and then turn her attention back on the body of the man who had been her everything. Woolf would pile the wood and start the fire, and when it finished burning there would be only ash left. Nothing for the birds to pick at, nothing for the sun and the air to rot. She had seen rotting bodies, and he deserved better than that. “Goodbye.” Is all she says, a whisper, faded and brittle. Then she settles into the black shoulder of the horse at her side, refusing to look up and find the red of those eyes lest she fall completely apart.