Tiberios
He wants to know, more than anything, what force drives them together like this. He wants to understand a way to give her up, to erase her, to turn back time and prevent this from ever occurring. It’s not because he hates her, no - in fact it’s the opposite. He’s so desperate to have her that when her head touches the bare spot against his shoulder he knows he would die a thousand deaths to feel that sensation once every hundred years. Her words, so much like a bird that is new to flight, tremble in the air around them and he closes his eyes before comforting her. His nose trails along the side of her silver neck, and he smiles into her skin.
“Forever is a very long time, Talulah.” He replies, knowing that she understands the finality of his life compared to her endless one. He’d thought about it countless times; the life they could’ve led if they had chosen each other. It would have been glorious for him, the brightest existence possible. But fate can never be escaped, and Talulah would have watched him wither until he took his last breath. Tiberios knows that’s a pain he never wants her to endure.
Whether she likes it or not, someday Tiberios will not return to her side. Someday he will cease to exist, and like all the other mortals woven into her life, He’ll become a memory.
But he soothes her instead, pushing the reality of the situation far behind him until there is only Talulah to think of. She’s hurting, and whether or not he’s the source of her pain Tiberios is intent on simply being here for her, just as she’d been there for him time and time before. The image of that proud mare transformed into the one beside him is a sobering one, but she had seen the worst in him and still cared. “Tell me,” He asks, his voice a velvet whisper, “Do you honestly believe that I’d leave you for good?”
He feels her heartbeat beneath him, and suddenly he knows that he will always belong to her. “Never Talulah.” He insists, “Never.”
Tiberios
Initiate of the Falls