hold on, this will hurt more than anything has before; oksana

[Oksana]

you taught me the courage of the stars before you left

how light carries on endlessly, even after death

She watches his face change, watches those hollows deepen as he regards her with what seems to be a sense of incredulity. It is, she realizes, when the words tumble from his mouth like a damned confession, when he flings them like stones at her heart. “Yes, you stupid fool, you broke my heart.” Her brow furrows and her jaw tightens when she looks at him, and though it isn’t hatred, never hatred, that changes her face, it is something dark, something devastating. “You are everything I have ever wanted, the only thing I have ever needed.” She pauses for a heartbeat to find her voice again as it wavers, though her eyes never drift from his. “And for a while you gave it to me, I’m sure you remember, when I was failing so miserably at being Queen?” Her voice breaks off bitterly as she throws one of his own stones back at him. “I had you and nothing else mattered.” She pauses again and her jaw clenches and unclenches with all the tension and turmoil rippling through her body. This time her eyes do drift from his face, but only to trace the death hiding in the shadow of his eyes, in the valleys between his bones. “And then you left. You used every one of my fears and regrets against me, and you left. Don’t you ever forget that the things you want are out of reach because you’ve put them there.”

She turns from him, exhausted. “A life with you is the only one I’ve ever wanted and yet you force me to have it with someone else." He stumbles closer and she lets him, but she makes no effort to close the yawning gap between them. It kills her though, like claws digging in her chest, gnawing through her heart, he is close and he is dying, and she cannot shake the fear that as soon as she touches him he will leave again. Disappear like a ghost.

But what he says next astounds her and she cannot help the way her body recoils from him in the wake of her shock. “You think I’m in love with him?” She asks in a voice that is low and soft and shattered. “Makai, you are the only one I have ever been in love with. Whatever your soul is made of, mine was made from the same.” She doesn’t tell him that she doesn’t love Dempsey, it wouldn’t be true anyways, she did love him. But it was in the same way she loved Straia, it wasn’t intimate, it wasn’t romantic. When Makai had shattered her to dust, Dempsey had scooped up the pieces so she wouldn’t be lost forever to the wind. The friendship forged from that was strong as iron. But she didn’t know how to explain this without pushing him further away- she wasn’t even sure if he would believe her. So she let it be. Instead with a hollowed out smile that sucked the light from her shining emerald eyes, “Of course I believed you, how could I ever be enough?”

Makai coughs again, but it doesn’t fade like the others before it. Instead she can see the tightening of muscle beneath skin stretched too thin, too tight, and they ripple and quiver and heave with the effort of remaining. He coughs again and the sound is wet. Her mouth breaks with the crushing weight of the frown that appears there as she notices the blood on his lips and in the grass. “Makai.” She whispers, and her voice is filled with loss and anguish and possessiveness all at once. “Oh, Makai.” And she is at his side immediately, her shoulder braced against his, her nose wiping away the blood as it beaded on his lips. “I never knew why you settled for me,” she says filling the place beside him, “you are so much better. Than me, than this. Fight it.” And she know it’s true, crushed selfishly against his side with her mouth pressed to his. To his cheek, to his neck, to his heart beating sluggishly in his chest. She is so weak, so greedy, so willing to drown in this moment even though he’s like a knife buried in her chest and as soon as he pulls away, removes that blade, her life will bleed into the dirt at their feet.

His voice is so soft that she nearly misses it, drowning so eagerly as she is with the feverish heat of his skin pressed to hers and his scent burying itself in her nose. “You’re wrong, as usual,” she says quietly, her eyes hidden in the shadow of his dark face, “there’s no one waiting for me.” A bitter, strangled laugh that she cuts off just as quickly as it tumbles from her lips and then a quiet, agonized murmur of dissonant sound, "I will never be enough."

You should know that, she thinks with her face pressed selfishly to his neck.

oksana