grasping branches.
( fe10 spoilers )
He quiets like a child scolded, a bit fearful, a bit ashamed, when he hears Almedha's plea. It is difficult, so difficult, to face her; it always has been, to be confronted with a boundless love. Love has been a name he has always sought, always yearned for, but he knew not the depths of it until she had begun to wield it, all-encompassing in its mass.
They say the darkness is deep and enveloping, but compared to love, the dark felt like but a flickering candlelight's flame.
She could burn him, fill his nose and lungs with ash, but at the same time, she has done nothing at all. She speaks, she holds her distance, but she is strong and unwavering— a sturdy rock against the ocean's tumultuous tide. She speaks of the past, tries to sever him from its chains, but this time, she does not chain him to her in return.
She is telling him she shall let him go. A part of him doesn't believe it, but it is difficult to discern fact from fiction. How much of this is belief, and how much of this is the truth? How much of it is him, twisting reality for his own narrative, and how much can he trust his own mind?
It is suffocating, it is true, but he feels his eyes burn. He feels his weakness, feels himself folding in.
His voice is quiet, trembling, weak. He is everything Almedha's former lover wasn't.
(She tells him this is fine.)
“ Give me the choice, and I... It's difficult, ” he replies. “ I am frightened of this choice, Lady Almedha. I don't want its burden...! ”
He holds a hand to his face, but there are no tears yet to cry. He fears the thought like he fears this decision now.
He had told Micaiah once that it is difficult to make a decision when it comes to playing with the lives of the people one loves. He considered her kind and adorable for this struggle.
Faced with the same fault, he sees only its pain, awakening.
“ I have lived my life without love... yearning for it... of course I couldn't be strong enough to banish it myself if you make me do it...! ”
He was never meant to be king, never meant to have its duties, for how could he dictate the livelihood of many when he was too weak to dictate his own?
her expression hardens at that. he cannot deny his responsibility in this. she will stay or she will go, but it will be his choice. the responsibility of it needs to be his to bear. it is not something she can take on, if he does not wish for a mother.
she cannot shelter him from his own choices, cannot shelter him at all, if he does not wish for it. the agony of thinking that she is unneeded is nothing compared to the deeper agony that would come with doing him any harm.
"i cannot do this for you, pelleas."
she is stern. it is all she knows how to be. beneath that, though, she is weak-willed and knows that if he does not decide firmly, there will be no decision made at all. she does not have the strength to withdraw again.
to do so the first time had exhausted her will.
not to mention having pulled back from soren... must she truly be all alone?
she will bear that burden, if she must, but she cannot make it easy, to shrink back delicately so that pelleas can go guiltlessly.
her lips press together, and she sighs. her hands once again grip the front of her skirts, just for something to hold. if she lets go, she may reach out for him. that cannot happen. still, her hands twitch. oh, to amputate the phantom limb of memory, the moments spent with pelleas, complex and winding as they were. oh, to stop picking at the scab.
"i cannot carry the burden of dismissal. i'm sorry. i should not have... sought you out."
