What is this character’s deepest regret?
[The journal page is faded lightly, the smell of chalk rising from the pages. It has been torn from the book and crumpled up, the first half of the message lost.]
The word “love” is thrown about these day that sometimes I wonder about the meaning of the word.
When we first met, I was looking for a place to die. A terrible truth. A walking corpse ready to drop, willing to let it end; shackled to this world only through a force of will and spite like nothing ever seen.
It was a dark time for me.
Then something miraculous happened and it brought me before you and... My Lady, I will forever be humbled by the kindness you showed me. I approached you, an unknown thing so mired in the darkest thought my immortal soul could hold... And you accepted that.
In simple words I can only thank you. Thank for this gift of true life, not just blind survival. In your actions, you showed me that I am not yet the beast that prowls my mind and that I can still be what I am. That I can just be me.
There is a future in front of me now. One that I can lift my head and greet with a honest and open heart... But I'd not wish to greet it alone. And that leads me to the purpose of this letter. I've done many things in my life that I regret but this will be my biggest. The most painful.
I will write the words, “I love you.”
I will mean them with every inch of my being.
I will beg and cry that one day you might know and...
I'll never show you this.
You deserve something better than me. Better than a broken empty shell, even if I am healing; I am scarred and deformed. Broken and beaten. So tired of life. Even if I yet hold such a burning light in my heart, I fear it may one day fade and I would never wish for you to see that.
I will stand at your side. As I have done, please never question that. You have more than earned my loyalty and my trust... Perhaps you might catch a glimpse of these emotions but I implore you ignore them.
We are friends first and foremost and no matter how much my affections beg otherwise, I do not want to lose that.
~Your ever faithful knight