how do I learn my dreams to mold, to lay them bare in the morning cold?
She is an enigma, his Linnea. As delicate as the blossoms tucked behind her ear and as steadfast as the roots suggested by her woody limbs. She is the fire and the flood, and he wonders if she knows just how wondrous she is. But these thoughts do not stem the pain that comes from her words—the anger that rushes into him to match her own. It’s a dagger that she buries between his ribs and he nearly breaks away from her to find relief, but instead he remains and lets the closeness bury it to the hilt in him.
“I know,” he says between gritted teeth. How could he not know that he had stopped protecting her? How could he not be acutely aware of how little he had protected her? He had watched her through that portal. Watched the way her life had bled from her. Watched as death claimed the young girl she had been and how she had been buried in the earth, blossoming later into something new entirely.
Something beautiful, he knows.
Something perfect and still entirely her.
But it had taken death to get there—and it was her blood on his hands.
He doesn’t break the contact though. Partially because it feels like a punishment to hold her close and to know that he is undeserving of it. Partially because he is famished for the feel of her cheek against his chest. Partially because he could no longer staring into the sun than he could stop the beat of his heart.
It simply is. They simply are.
He swallows hard and shakes his head. “Does it matter where I am going if I cannot protect you? If I have never been able to protect you?” He ignores her question about who would protect him. It doesn’t matter. Perhaps it never mattered. He didn’t deserve to be protected, least of all at the expense of her safety.
His face breaks though at the last question, his silvery gaze finding her pink one.
“Linnea,” softer this time, the anger in him washing away as it always did. Helpless. “I can’t throw away something that I’ve never deserved to hold onto. Something that was never mind to hold.” He reaches forward to push the blossoms and branch back, struck again by the sweetness of her scent.
“Please don’t make my last memory of you so sad.”
He smiles, the curve of his lip nearly cracking.
“I want to remember you smiling.”
nikolaus
if they’re still out there then the chasm grows
( for all you know, for all you’ve known )