[private] i saw the stars and didnt ask why

[Nashua]

He was selfish and Nashua was never more acutely aware of it as he was now. All it took was a call, and there she was, emerging through the deep fog like a welcome dream. Nash knew he should have said it then; he should have told her right then and there about what had transpired between him and Illuminae.

And yet, at the sight of Noel, he can only bring himself to walk forward. Each step feels heavy, as if the weight of what he is about to say would stop him. But Nashua keeps walking, keeps moving towards her because Noel has been his home and haven, and he (selfishly) wants to be beside her, where he has weathered every storm of his adult life.

She comes to him and he draws nearer to her, turning his blazed face into the delicate curve of her neck. Something that he has done a thousand times, and something that he will never do again. Noel deserved better. She deserved someone who would have given up their kingdom, that wouldn’t have allowed an ocean to remain between them. She deserved someone who would have stayed with her, who would have been there for each step their children took and would have remained when the last fledged.

She didn’t deserve someone who had gone to chase out the darkness in another and then crossed a line in the process.

”I - ,” Nashua begins to softly say, wanting to tell her that he has missed her too. Wanting to so easily fall back into the way that they had always been, but that would be a trap. It would be a lie, and while he was capable of doing so many things wrong, he wouldn’t intentionally lie to the woman who had been at his side for nearly a decade. ”I have to tell you something,” he tells her, forcing himself to step away from her and then clips out: ”Noel, we have to talk.”

@Noel