Whitefish River this is how we heal:

last post yee haw

That hadn’t been what she’d intended. The word had wisped from her without thought. 
This.. hadn’t been what she’d meant to bring about. At all.

She lingered there with a smile, as usual, but when he went on and on and on, it faltered into an inescapable frown. And when he looked at her with flame in his eyes, she’d gone stricken, the color of wax.

All she said to his wishes, like the fool she was? “No.” Then: 
“You are not a game to me. You never were. Tell me how else to help you, how to know you, because I do not know how! It does not matter that you will never love me ze way I want — you love our children, and that is more than I could ask for.” Was it? “I cannot ask you to love me! And each time I think we grow together, I— I say ze most ridiculous things. I ruin us.”
She would open her ridiculous, scarred mouth and send whatever progress they’d made into shambles. “Forgive me.”

Once, in midwinter, he’d told her that he must come to her — and in this moment where her mind craved for his and her heart thrummed for him and her blood murmured for his, it was his choice. And he was walking away. Still: 
Aurëwen wanted to know him; she wanted to know the shadows in his eyes when they spoke of battle; she wanted to know each and every part of him as intimately as she believes she knows herself.
And she wants to know how he is, and how deep his anguish went. She wanted to know if it was as unforgiving as her own self-loathing was. She wanted to know how to soothe him.

She was not merely his friend  (still?)  and lover  (never again?)  and the mother of his children but she was his mate. Whether Verx ever wished to be hers by vocalization or never, they had made life and had raised it in this world, no matter their absences. They were bound by creation — and she was sure she wasn’tmistaken that he held her body and soul merely in his own scent.

At least, that was how she saw it.

But she only stood there, for the remainder of the heartbeats she’d originally proffered to him, 
“Until we meet again, Vercingetorix,” voice hoarse, strained.
And then, she receeded into the dark of the cavern, without another look or word.