everyone I know goes away in the end, Skellig - birthing

[Ryatah]

“What have I become, my sweetest friend?
Everyone I know goes away in the end."

She doesn’t know why they are always meant to be broken, as though they are perpetually destined to always be repairing the ruin of their hearts. They were both made up of patchwork stitches and scars, and even though they most often inflicted the injuries on each other, they never left. She is not sure if this is an indicator of the strength of their love, but it’s what she has chosen to see it as. To imagine a life without him in it, where he is not the place her heart comes to rest, is unbearable.

Still, there is a part of her that always wonders what kind of resentment he must harbor towards her. When he can smell them (what did it say of her, that there had been more than one over the years?) on her skin, when she births children that are clearly not his — how can he possibly still touch her so softly, how can his tongue still form words that carry only tenderness, and none of the bitterness that hers would hold if he did the same? She destroys him with her selfishness, and then tries to heal the wounds with those same lips. She didn’t deserve him, and it was slowly eating away at her on the inside.

With her porcelain head resting against his chest, she drowns out the negative thoughts with the sound of his heart — the heart she is supposed to protect and instead only manages to break — and allows a faint smile when he says their daughter is special. ”Is it because she looks mainly like you?” Her tone is light, the words meant in jest, but even she knows that something about Evenstar is different. Eadoin, Caliph, and Liseli had all been special to her too, because they were his. Her only children born of pure, untainted love, and no other motive behind them. She doesn’t know why Evenstar stands out, why her birth seemed to hold so much significance. She only knows that the sound of the little girl’s sleepy breathing as she rests in the shadow of both her parents makes her heart swell, and how she would give anything for this moment - just the three of them – to last forever.

But the sound of her own breathing is almost intrusive on the quiet moment, and she pulls away to succumb to the cough that had been building in her lungs. The flecks of blood that dot her lips rest like crimson beads on top of her pale skin, before they absorb and stain to a deeper blush color. ”I’ll be okay,” and even though her voice is weak and cracked from soreness she does her best to sound sure of herself. Her plague is the least of her worries; the outwardly sickness that she showed only seemed to mask the way she was being torn apart on the inside, and she knew she had no right for self-pity, because she had brought it upon herself. Laying her head against him once more, and breathing in his familiar scent as her stained lips brush against his skin, she cannot help but to whisper softly, ”I love you, Skellig.” And I’m so, so sorry, are the words that she keeps to herself, letting them echo inside her head, because she knows that even if she said them out loud, they wouldn’t fix what she kept breaking.

RYATAH

you could have it all, my empire of dirt

@[Skellig]
 
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