Would it be easier, she wonders, if she did not feel that same thrill when he spoke her name? Even with the careful tone, even with his wariness, it still amazes her that she is standing here, breathing, and hearing his voice. How many times had she dreamed of him in the century she has lived without him? How many times had she wished to curl beneath his wing and smell his wild scent and hear his gentle laugh as he teased her?
And now, this is how she repays him for his love that followed her from death itself. It breaks her heart afresh to hear the sweetness there and know that in a few moments she can cause it to shrivel towards her forever.
A part of her attempts to rationalize this by reminding her Plume would not love her if he knew what she had been like when she had returned to the earth. Weak, afraid, a relic of a time long past who gave up every single time she had a chance to make a difference.
For too long of a moment she stands there silently, waiting for the right words to come to her, before she realizes that there will never be any right words for what she needs to tell him. So with a deep inhale, she just starts. Her voice trembles slightly as it comes out, soft and low in the night air. “I’m so sorry, Plume, for being as distant as I have been and for how long I let it stretch out. I’ve been a coward, thinking if I could just avoid this very conversation somehow it would wash away what I’ve done…” She is still a coward, still feels fear and self-loathing pulse through her as though they are in her veins instead of blood. Perhaps they are - she’s gone so long with them as her constant companions.
She wants to look anywhere else instead of at his face, but she knows seeing his pain is what she deserves. She should have to live with the weight of this memory for the rest of her days - until the sea finally claims her cold body.
Agetta tries not to cry, though her midnight blue eyes shimmer with the tears she fights as she continues. As her confession begins. “This spring, I gave birth to a filly that I had with someone else. I’ve… been with them, raising our daughter together.” She hears the hypocrisy as she says it - knows that she shares two daughters with Plume that she should have been with too. The shame of it causes her head to droop.
She fears that will be the part that stings the most. That it wasn’t something she had impulsively done in the heat of autumn, wasn’t something that had been forced upon her. She had made a new family, thinking she could somehow have both. Excuses and explanations begin to bubble up on her tongue but she stifles them for now, paralyzed by fear and indecision.
“I’m so sorry.” She says it again, and her leg twitches with the impulse to step forward, to touch him. But she holds herself back even though she fears she’s already felt his touch on her skin for the last time and she did not even know it.
@[plume]