She looks at Merry and her heart feels so heavy at the yawning distance that seems to have settled so firmly between them. It hadn’t always been this way though, this chasm was new to her and she had no idea how to cross it to reach him again. Even now he barely acknowledged her, didn’t try to engage with his siblings or even Kharon. It is like he is bare on the outside, hiding or hidden, all the parts that make him her baby tucked away someplace deep inside and dying.
She is careful not to let him see how much this distance hurts her, how confusing it is that her baby, her sweet little Merry seems to be so completely gone from her. This boy is like a stranger. He is quiet and obedient, but there is no spark inside him, none of what made him Cimmerian. When he turns away without another word, disappearing into the relative quiet of the treeline, she lets him go. It is clear he doesn’t want to be here, and she wishes there were two of her. One version to stay here and watch the twins as they played, the other version to follow him into the dark and curl up at his side.
She would ask Dovev to watch the twins soon, claim some time alone for just her and Merry. It didn’t seem like he wanted to spend time with her, that he wanted to let her in, but she would try anyway. Would never stop trying. Whatever had shifted between them had likely been her fault, because of something she had or hadn’t done. Maybe taking and raising him had been bad for him, maybe he would have been better off with Shah and Ilka. But even that thought wounded her selfish heart. Merry was hers, always hers.
Her eyes don’t leave him for as long as it takes him to find his place among the shadows, waiting until he is safe and settled. In that instant she thinks it would be nice to have Kharon’s ability, to be able to whisper another I love you to where the black and white teen waits. But he had chosen to be away from her, to be alone.
She wasn’t good enough for anyone anymore.
Her heart feels heavy in her chest when she finally turns back to her beautiful companion, and though there is that same reflexive light shaping the echo of a smile into the corners of her mouth for him, it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. You should go, Kharon. Enjoy the evening. She thinks as she buries her face in the warmth of his shoulder, needing a moment to hide the hurt that tangles itself in thorns over the hollows of her mottled blue face. He’ll know what it is that hurts her even without her saying so, know this heaviness in her chest pushing shade into her heart.
It even hurts when he calls her baby, hurts because she wants to be, wants to be his for a night. Maybe needs to be. It always feels so easy with him, always feels like she’s known him for lifetimes and being curled into his shoulder like this is like coming home. But she also knows he doesn’t mean these things he says to her, not with any kind of real emotion. She has learned again and again that men don’t mean the things they say to her.
She sags, suddenly exhausted, and the lights she had buried so carefully against her fur and into the tangles of her mane disappear. She’ll hold the lights in the trees and along the pathways, keep the Island festive for the guests, but her part here is done. It is too hard to hold any joy in her heart when her Merry is so distant, so different. She shifts, and her lips find his jaw, his cheek, his nose in gentle little kisses before she leans back to look up at him with a smile pasted on her dark, broken face. Go on, have fun. She nods in the direction of the festivities, keeping that smiling mask so carefully in place like he won’t know the depth of the hurt hiding beneath. But it doesn’t matter, it isn’t important, she’d end up disappointing him anyway just like she had everyone else.
