— I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night —
He asks whether she could find peace here, and it breaks her heart.
Agetta has been given much, joy so mingled up in the pain she’s had trouble distinguishing the two from each other. She thinks of him, of Plume, of the children she has raised since she had tried to stop being a living ghost. She had rooted herself into Beqanna again only to saw away at her own tethers. Could she find peace? If she could float free, if she could untangle herself from a century's worth of guilt and self-loathing. If there is a path out from there, she cannot see it.
She listens quietly as he explains his death. How different than hers - what she wouldn’t do to forget pieces of her life and not have so many of her memories shouting at her in the shadows.
It’s only after he admits that he is not sure if he wants to return to death that she answers his question. Still in a carefully quiet voice, the truth of her vocalized. “I worry that I’m too wasted to find peace here. That I do not deserve it.” It's an old hurt and her voice waivers with it as it comes out. Those midnight eyes swim with tears as she looks at him and suddenly this gap between them feels like too much. She cannot bear it. And whether it is selfish of her or not, she reaches out to him. She wants to embrace him, wants to press her thundering chest against his skin, but though she does her best to ignore her fears and her worries they root her in place.
So instead it is only her muzzle, brushing soft whispers against skin as dark as hers used to be in her first life.
“But I want it. With you - oh, how I want it.”
Would it be enough for them both, to find islands of peace together whenever they can? She can believe it, can't she? It's close enough of a possibility, she just needs to reach out and grasp it.
@[garbage]