if this was meant for me, why does it hurt so much?
if you're not made for me, why did we fall in love?
if you'd return for me, i'd never want for more.

Some ancient, tortured beast sweeps down with jaws spread wide and swallows her whole, only her, leaving Hobgoblin behind to watch with helplessness. It consumes him from the inside out, an aching disease that rips everything apart, and he has nothing to contain it or cure it. That is Sikeax’s job, and Sikeax feels gone.
She’s standing in the sunlight, sweat gathering in her pores as the light bares down on frail skin. Less burns have dotted her hide than usual this year. She takes it as a godsend, a sign that life outside the Dragon’s Throat is going better than it was.
Well, except for right now.
Discomfort hums in her lip as her teeth sink. It’s become a nervous tweak these days, finding herself doing it more and more as her ability to calmly handle a situation lessens its grip on her. There’s too much to fear. Fear and worry hold her hands and guide her through the dark to finally answer a call she doesn’t know the source of, but it’s there. Sikeax only needs to look.
Hobgoblin fidgets. She feels so cold, sucking the life out of his lungs as he is left to stand idle near her side, waiting, hoping for anything that could make this better.
Nothing comes.
“Okay?” Worry taints his voice and her chest tenses. This is her fault, and for once, she’s got no shame for it. She needs to face this beast before it consumes her whole and leaves nothing behind but what she used to be, and all this time she’s let herself believe that she’s grown into something different, far from that point in time.
Funny, how lying is becoming her way of life when in the past she found no interest in it.
“Of course not.” They snap out of her a lot harder than she intended, caught up in her own recoil and Hobgoblin’s. Her’s bleeds pity and sorrow, except short-lived because the world is going to have to accept what is happening soon enough, and she’s definitely had enough, and his pours pain that lasts a million years. She can’t bring herself to look despite knowing what is going on near her shoulder. Hobgoblin’s eyes swell with unseen tears, eyelids sweeping downwards in a flash to try and gather them up before she knows.
She hates herself for this, for him, for everything. A scowl creeps over her lips and she’s got to hope he doesn’t see it, but there’s a whimper filling up the space in his throat and a sob crawling into place. He swallows them both whole in a sniffle that she hears, but nothing stops the agony they’re forced to share in the wake.
When it hits her ears is when she twists her eyes in their sockets to look at him, blues now dulled and the expression around her eyes sunken. The shrine does nothing without her gaze to scrutinize it.
And there he is, the product of everything they’ve ever experienced together, crying for the first time ever, and she can’t bring herself to do a single thing about it because she has no idea how to handle the situation because he loves her with a purity no one but them will know, and she has struck him down. A brief thought flies threw her head makes her wish that his tears could make her skin burn and reach down into her soul. Repentance that’ll never come, and while Hobgoblin is keen to forgetting, this is surely something he’ll never forget.
“I’m sorry.” She mumbles, soft and cold, running a blade across his cheekbones as it frees itself to wipe his tears away.
I love you.
No response, absolutely what she deserves, and then her eyes are back on the shrine, listening to the soft whine of his sorrows strike her down.

OOC: Hobgoblin is in his wendigo form.