09-06-2021, 03:55 PM
selaphiel
His resolve should wilt in the face of the beast she becomes.
But he is foolish in his loyalty and he remains, steadfast. Even as her claws sink into the soil between them. Even when she tells him that he is wrong, when she says that there is nothing at all left of the friend he’d known.
(And he does wonder where things went sideways, certainly. When it became the father of her children who did the killing instead of the other way around. And his own heart clenches like a fist with regret because he could not tell her when to do it. If he could, perhaps this could have been avoided. Perhaps he could have saved her in more ways than one.)
He retreats, but only barely. Because he has never seen a creature like this. But he grits his teeth and stiffens and he stays, even still. She will have to kill him, he thinks, in order for him to abandon her.
(He does not know that the body will not let him die, not yet. Even if she were to sink those terrible claws into the meat of him, if she were to plunge those awful teeth into his throat, the ice in him would rush to heal him before death could truly come for him.
She had sacrificed her life for him for no reason at all once.)
He shakes his head but does not immediately speak. Instead, he simply studies the beast stood before him, seething. And when he does finally speak, it is quiet.
“He has taken nothing from you that you cannot get back,” he says and though it is quiet, it is fierce, “you are stronger than he is.” He doesn’t know this to be true, but he believes it with everything he is.
“You are stronger than this.”
I just bite my tongue a bit harder
@Mazikeen