I've learned to live with these fatal gifts
and still you're mine
It used to be he never quite knew what to believe in. The world had proven conflicted, a jumbled mess he hadn’t quite known how to make heads nor tails of. He had grown in the sweet, innocent freedom of his parents embrace until the world could no longer be kept at bay. Until life had proven, many times, just how cold and heartless it could be. Until he had understood that nothing was as he had thought it had been.
Now though, now he thinks perhaps he had been trying too hard to see the world in black and white. He thinks perhaps he had been so focused on the stark differences in his realities to see the subtle, beautiful colors that had gleamed all around him.
Until Briseis.
Until one fateful day in the darkest reaches of the forest, she had fled straight into his embrace. She had found a monster and refused to believe him any such thing. Sometimes it still amazes him that all he had truly needed was her, reminding him what it is to live. Reminding him that he is more than just a boy swallowed by shadows, forgotten in heartless world.
He laughs abruptly when she calls him out, accusing him of hiding still. It’s true, though it feels much less like what it used to. “If this is hiding,” he teases, nibbling at a dark strand of her mane, “then I never want to stop.”
Her next question catches him somewhat by surprise, though he supposes it should not have. He silently considers her revelation, barely avoiding the niggling self-doubt that tells him he isn’t truly worthy of such a declaration.
Truthfully though, he had never really considered the question. He had never doubted his parents love for each other of course, but had never paused to ask if they thought they were soulmates. But as he considers it, he supposes he must believe it. They had truly been made for one another.
“I suppose I always have,” he replies slowly, pressing almost unconsciously closer to her. As though his body knows exactly what it is they are discussing. “But I don’t think I believed I had one.” The last is admitted on a breathy half-whisper, as though the very words might rip this beautiful dream from him and reveal an ugly reality he had tried too hard to forget. But as he drops his lips to her cheek, feeling the solid, delicious warmth of her, he knows this is as real as he could ever wish it to be.