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02-26-2016, 10:17 AM
She leaned into him as he leaned into her, taking comfort in his forgiveness, his love. A single tear leaked from her eye, but she forced her sobs away - she must be strong now, strong for the son that she left behind. It tore at her, ripping her shattered soul into ever more tattered shreds; the guilt and the anguish threatened to overpower her, to swallow her and drag her down into darkness and pain. She held on to Ivezho's light, more tightly by the minute, as though he was the only one who could save her.
Perhaps he was, now.
And then her world fell away.
Frostfall? But it had been Frostfall when she last left, when she went on patrol to the western reaches of the Dragon's Throat. Perhaps it wasn't that bad, perhaps she had been gone for mere weeks (she knew it was worse than that from his reception, but she still longed for the lie that she told herself). Whatever her wishes, hopes, dreams in that moment - she never expected him to say two years.
"No," she gasped, pulling away in surprise. "It - it can't be." She can't have been gone for so long, can't have fallen through the cracks for that long, can't - can't --
"Hawke and Aelin were just born," she protested further. "I can't - I missed - oh -" The world was falling to pieces around her as she fell apart within. What was she going to do? She had disappeared for too long to go back now - no, she could not hurt them all further. Better, wasn't it, to believe her dead? No, no, no, no, no --
Oh, but there was more.
Much more.
More... siblings. But - how - I wasn't - they aren't -
Oh.
They weren't hers. But they were his.
Oh.
She couldn't go back. There was no way that she could return to face him and her, whoever she was. She could not face her mate's other family, but, more than that, she could not bring herself to face Gaucho. She could not make his life more difficult. Not again. "Oh, ma shekhikhi," she breathed, pain evident in the way she spoke, in the sudden slump of her shoulders. "I have failed you, my love. I am so sorry. I never - I never meant -" But it didn't matter. It couldn't. The hurt was too deep.
He couldn't forgive her. She didn't expect him to. "I remember patrolling the edges of the Throat," she told him anyway, owing him something, anything - she owed him an explanation that would never be enough, would never replace the time that she stole from him. "And then... now I'm... here. Wherever here is."
"Talk talk talk."
--Astraeus.--
you give up your soul till you break down;
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@Ivezho
