Interlude II - The Promise

Gossamer dreams fly away on wings stolen from an angel’s breath.

This breath grows fainter by the second as he holds her broken body in his arms. The tears are gone, banished by grief that runs too deep and too dry to summon even this last refuge of despair.

Only red flows now.

Rivulets of it tentatively scrawl a child’s scribble on the floor, careless of the tragic story it tells.

The walls are studded with its pearls, translucent and vivid, glittering like eyes refusing to blink as they stare at the last pages of this, their life.

Their death.

It trickles down his face, caressing his skin with the same warm touch as her fingers always had, and still would, if only she could muster the strength to lift her bloodless hand.

A dash of it leaks from her lips, spreading a blush of scarlet against her ghost pale skin, leeching the last of what little warmth its dwindling reservoirs contain.

At this moment, faced with the end of life, of the world, of everything, only one word escapes his lips.

“Why?”

A shadow rustles fleetingly behind her eyes, complex like the moon reflected on the ripples of a never ending song, before the familiar calm returns once more. Her lips tremble as they shape words, yet no sounds come out. Still, he hears the words as though she’s whispered them in his ear.

“I’m sorry.”

The hand supporting her back tightens as he draws her closer to his embrace, as though fervently praying that he could drown in the endlessness of her eyes instead of the blood mercilessly pumping from the cruel tear in her chest. There, his other hand lies limp in defeat and abject horror, still nervelessly curled around the pommel of the blade biting deeply into her yielding flesh.

Still, only one word can take shape on his lips. It escapes as the howl of a wounded beast.

“Why?”

Again, the flicker of the dark deep, the immeasurable and profound, yet banished all the same by the suffused starlight pouring out endlessly from her eyes.

“I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head, refusing to believe, to see or hear. Nothing will be the same, everything has been taken from him. What use are words now? Why should he demand reason or logic? There is only this day, this one moment in which everything has come to a sudden, heart-rending end.

Finality in its ultimate form, come calling upon the wings of an angel’s last whisper.

His angel.

He knows what she wants, what she needs. No matter that he does not understand, let alone even care for what must follow. For he knows already he cannot endure. All his wounds and misery, the endless battles and constant struggle, none of it could ever shake him, but she has broken him so utterly and so completely that he knows it is over.

This is the end.

Yet her eyes demand of him, not forgiveness in the words of now, but rather the promise of tomorrow.

How dare she ask this of him?

“I’m sorry.”

Yet, how could he refuse her final words, thrice spoken with the very last of her breath before being snatched by the cold, indifferent wind?

Her hands lie limp on the floor, her heart stutters as it struggles mightily for one last beat, then another one, and one more after. Her chest no longer moves, her lungs already flooded with precious blood, more of it leaking down the corner of her lips.

Still, she refuses to let go. Her eyes never lose that same serenity that had always fascinated him so, even underneath all the sorrow and regret lurking within.

How could she ask this of him?

Yet, how could he deny her?

“Yes.”

This one word was soft, but so painful it died almost in the instant it left his lips. It was no mere absolution, no simple forgiveness. For between two souls and a love that never dies, such words would be an empty gesture.

It hurt, this lone word, and it would only continue to hurt more because of the promise it implied and the endless days it solemnly ushered in, slave to a fate he would hate more than mere existence itself.

This was his death and his doom.

This was his final promise.

For her.