i don't have a choice, but i'd still choose you. || magnus

[magnus]

He knew that he has now dragged her out into this ocean of his making, the storm and water turbulent, churning with the memories that now hollow him out. Despite the wisdom writ in her light eyes, despite the passion and the fire, she was still young. She still had an entire lifetime to determine her own path, to make her mark on the world. She should be with someone unburdened—someone who could make her better, who could come to her unencumbered. Instead, she stood with him, with the ocean washing around their chests, with everything that broke him apart on the table between them—the death, the life.

She deserved better.

Magnus struggled to pull from the muck of his despair, from everything that threatened to pull him under so that he could face her, so that he could drink her in. Her features were awash with sympathy and with  a sorrow all their own and his heart shattered in his chest; this is what he had done to her. This is what he had done to them. She had peeled back the corner, but she could not have expected the dam that she would have unleashed by that simple motion. Who could have possibly expected what he was?

He shook his head. “Come here,” he murmured, motioning to his side, to a golden coat littered with scars that each told their own story, the places where the hide was rubbed bare, to the youth that still clung to him although it had no right to it. He pulled her in close to his side, his mouth finding her temple, to her neck, her throat. This time, there was not the burning fire he had shown earlier—just gentle, sweeping motions, as if he was studying the shape of her. He made a small noise in his throat as the taste of her settled onto his tongue, intoxicating in its own right. “I am selfish for wanting you as much as I do.”

Still, he held her close. “I thought that I would never be able to feel this way again, Ellyse.” Because who is allowed to feel this way not one, not twice, but three times in a lifetime? Who is allowed to have this much love in a life so riddled with scars and soaked in sin? “You remind me of the joys of living.”

out of the blue out into the loneliest place that you'll ever know
I carried the world just as far as I could but the damage had taken its toll