B
oudika does not spare herself the pain of looking at him fully; of taking in his changes, his punishment. Boudika does not spare herself the knowledge that, in some capacity, she caused his fall from grace. It had never been her intention, she knows—she had never thought to tear him from the Order, to steal his sight. But, there had always been a tangible pull between them. An inescapable gravity. If love were a language, rare and untranslatable, they spoke the same one.
Now, standing across from him, the end seemed inevitable. There had been no other option, at some point; perhaps it had been when she first held his throat between her teeth, or when they met at a bonfire, or when they shared each other’s warmth and secrets in the cave.
Boudika cannot help, now, how she stares at his face; she memorizes it, and remembers her own cruelness. She had stolen from him the opportunity to immortalize her in his mind; with his confession, and his promise, she had flown away. It had been too much for his eyes to stake claim upon her flesh; to write and rewrite each curve, each supple arc, in memory and memory again. Boudika wonders if she should regret it; if she should have stayed longer, before his blindness.
No, she decides.
She doesn’t regret it.
This truth blooms for her with the vibrance of a spring flower. Boudika regrets none of it; she never has. Not Vercingtorix. Not Orestes. Not Amaroq. Least of all, Tenebrae—because, if she had not met him, would she have ever learned hope again at all?
This doesn’t change the taste of pain. This doesn’t change the cavernous hurt held within her, a wound that cannot be nursed, an agony with no remedy.
I felt broken by you, changed, even then. His words sound a repetition of her own soul’s. They are an echo to her own thoughts. The sound of his voice reminds her of fire and pomegranates; of the mourning sea; of lips pricked by thorns.
Boudika says nothing. She rests behind his blindness like a phantom; like a ghost. She closes her own eyes, so perhaps in this, for a moment, they might be made equal. But as he attempts to reminisce her features, Boudika attempts to erase his: the militant physique, the bandages on his eyes, the silver of his body. She lets him become nothing but his voice, and the sea, and the way her heart somehow cannot decide whether to be leaden or light.
Me too. I cannot promise to ever hurt you again, Boudika. Because a love that never hurts is no love at all. The love I have for you is the most expensive thing I own. And I will pay for it with the pain of grief and tears and heartbreak. I will pay for it with my heart and soul.
There has never been a man to make such a declaration to her. Where before his words held no weight, no meaning—the sacrifice of his sight, of his beloved Order. It moves her.
Her ears flick to the sound of his steps against the sand. She knows he is nearing her, and this sets her heart to beating again. Part of her wishes to flee (and, chidingly, bitterly, Boudika thinks the part with self-respect). But another part of her wants to listen; she wants to close her eyes against their tragedy and, instead, hear the promise of a future.
I was a fool then, Boudika. You are the most dangerous creature I have ever met, but I will pay whatever price to keep you.
A pause—a pause full of the sea, and the gulls, and the lingering warmth of day.
I’m sorry.
Boudika’s eyes open.
The space between them remains large; he has stepped only so far into the sea. The hesitancy of those steps returns to her mind’s eye; she had not witnessed them before, but now she imagines them, and they break her heart. He had never been hesitant in that way; he had never been unsure of his own footing.
Her silence is the epitome of tension. It is a vow unspoken; a prayer unsaid; a sentiment unrequited.
Her silence is the epitome of eternity. It seems to hold within it not only seconds, but hours, days, weeks, years. There is a lifetime in this magnificent quiet.
(Beneath it dances another small eternity, one of betrayals—beneath it dances all the times she has loved before, and felt the pain of unrequited affections, of not being enough. Beneath this silence exists Vercingtorix when he turns away from her confession; beneath this silence Orestes’s words reemerge, when he tells her that she can only be what is in her nature; and Amaroq, wild beneath the water by the island. Beneath this silence is every time she has ever felt alone).
There is something different, however, in his apology; perhaps it is because it comes with a piece of flesh; perhaps because he has been changed by his love for her, and Boudika does not think any man has been changed by it before. Boudika steps forward, as he had; hesitantly. More hesitantly than she has ever stepped forward before, it feels.
And then, suddenly, they are nearly touching. She stands before him quiet and small. She says, “But Tenebrae, I do not want your love paid for in pain or grief, tears or heartbreak. I do not want it to be expensive.”
There is something urgent in her tone. “If you are to love me, should it not be as light and free as a bird above the sea? As moonlight on water—“
Boudika pauses. “We have both already paid so much. What if rather than continuing to take, we begin to give?” Boudika wants to curse her own optimism; she wants to turn from it, distrustful and cold, but somehow—somehow, forgiveness does not feel so wrong. “You hurt me, Tenebrae—you hurt me. But—“ and this is a desperate thing, a girl’s wish on dandelions, a shooting star dream. “—but, I want to believe you will not hurt me again.”
Finally, Boudika touches him; it is the gentlest of things. She moves to unwrap his eyes so, so hesitantly. She must see what they have done to him; what his penance has been.
“I want to choose to give in joy, and laughter, and love. Not to take in pain, and grief, and heartbreak.” And at last the white bandage falls away, and they are eye-to-eye again. "If you must make new vows, Tenebrae, than promise me to be loyal, and honest, and brave in your feelings. Promise me that from now on we do not wager in pain but in hope."
So tell me how to be in this world
Tell me how to breathe in and feel no hurt
