i worshipped at the altar of losing everything )
Oh, how it should thrill him!
How the heart should leap and thrash and rail against its ribbed cage in its want to throw itself at her feet.
Instead, it constricts. Shrinks into the darkest corner of his chest.
The breath goes thin and the eyelids flutter heavy as he tracks her progress. She is slow to close up the great swath of negative space and he tries desperately to steel himself against it. Her movements are measured and he wants to look away from her, wants so fiercely to shackle his focus to some far off focal point to stop the swimming of his head, but he is powerless to drag his gaze away. Because he has dreamed of her, carried her with him, and the eyes cannot quite believe what they are seeing.
She speaks but he is only vaguely aware of what she’s saying. Words filtered through heavy fog as they settle heavy in his head, someplace just out of reach.
There is a peculiar roaring in his head, the blood careening reckless through him, spurred onward by a mournful heart. She had not been his, he knows, but he had so completely been hers. That has not changed and he knows that it never will. He drags in a staggered breath now and knows that loving her is perhaps the only worthwhile thing he has ever done with his otherwise unremarkable life.
He swallows thickly as she comes to rest so close that he can smell her. Just as she can feel his warmth, he can feel the cold that rolls off of her in waves. He wonders what life has done to her in the meantime. She is darker at her edges, he realizes, but it makes no difference. Because the heart has launched itself into the soft space at the base of his throat and he struggles to breathe around it. The edges of his vision blur with how fiercely his head swims with their proximity.
“Don’t,” he whispers and it comes out strangled, weak. Finally, mercifully, he finds the strength to close his eyes. Don’t touch me, don’t come any closer, don’t give me a hope I don’t deserve. He is no longer the warm-eyed boy who’d stood beside her – only literally, as he’d never had it in him to be much of a leader – in the Chamber. The keen-hearted boy who’d been happy to love her even if he’d never have her. He is something weaker now, something worth resenting.
“If you come any closer, Ana, I won’t be able to let you go again,” he says and oh, how it hurts to admit it. But he does not open his eyes to gauge her reaction, just drags in another shuddering breath and waits for her to go.
