Blacktail Deer Plateau this world is only gonna break your heart

wraen's voice was quiet, layered over in thought -- arcturus' eyes fell to the ground. a new sensation was worming itself into his stomach and heart; unpleasant and constrictive.

if this was the moment, it felt wrong. he already knew the course this conversation would take, somehow -- the panic of it flew in his face like a startled hind and he could not shake it. she was going to say no, she was going to leave him -- she was going to tell him it was simply not meant to be, and to go find his dream in some other castle.

he shook his head earnestly as wraen suggested someday, he would leave her. no! that was not true! he wanted to protest it to his very core, but knew he must stay silent. she had never been a winter's day for him, he had never considered leaving her -- not now, not ever.

silence spanned between them. arcturus dwelt on how fickle fate was in that span; one day their lives seemed to be nothing but joyous open road. the next, eclipsed by the heavy weight of portentous doom hanging over their friendship like a stormy reckoning.

i can't give you a future, arthur. wraen imparted: how his blood flared then, and his eyes jumped. did she not see, his future was her? as long as she breathed, he would be besides her -- was that not future? did she wish for him to leave her side?

i am not in love with you. the guillotine he'd been waiting for.

once, revui had hit him so hard he'd felt his stomach suck back in a violent fit of nausea and bile. this felt worse.

once, a stag had kicked him in the ribs and he'd felt a crack and a furious sweep of pain so hot and fierce it blotted out his mind in sharp red dots: this -- this felt worse.

arcturus turned his muzzle to the clay beneath him, hiding the flush of tears which stung his yellow gaze. his nose tingled unpleasantly -- along his cheeks a distressing buzzing sensation activated. his stomach was falling a thousand meters a second, swirling in a death vortex which made his spine raise in tingling fear.

in a split second, the dream fractured like ice across a dark blue river. and that river was roaring in his ears, his mouth, his stomach which was falling endlessly --

he was waiting for the guillotine to sweep his his head off. when it fell to the ground and he ceased breathing, what then? if wraen cracked open his tightly-pried ribcage, would she see a heart that still stirred and beat profoundly for her? or would it be dark and blighted by black -- all the bad he had unwittingly done laid across it like the lattice-work of a cancer slowly starving his body?

her words were muffled by the dull roar which sounded somewhere between his skull and his ears like a tide.  if a person's heart sings, wraen had said -- did arcturus' heart sing or was the song it wove a deathknell, a high keen of a dream and a love lost?

the ground faded away. his feet and his soul and his mind were a thousand miles away above them, peering down at two impossibly small figures in a forest while the cataclysm of the cosmos swirled around them. he fought to come back, to steady his mind enough to stir his tongue -- for a long while, that silence yawned between them.

he wanted to give it a try. fuck the odds, what good had odds ever done him? he was helpless to show her the thousand ways he would never be the arthur she depicted: the one that would leave her come spring, and walk out of her life forever. that was not the arthur who stood before her as if husked; that was some other arthur who had never existed and never would. arcturus' lips twisted in an ugly and unhappy line.

for all of arcturus' romanticism, he had never believed love was unconditionally bilateral. love in all of its loveliness, could be unilateral. this fact did not cheapen what was the most profoundly important thing in this world. he could love unequivocally and exclusively, and that love was only sullied when he selfishly expected it unconditionally in return. and that was not love -- that was a projection of his selfish pathos.  moment it entered his relationship with wraen was the moment his love was sacrificed and replaced by an emotion that was cold and impure.

borne on the wings of this thought, arcturus' gaze lifted. his golden eyes were liquid and wavering, but full of resolve. "i want to give it a try." his dusky baritone was constricted, choked by the anxiety he might lose it all. "i don't want to lose you."

as long as they tried, and he never diffused ugly emotions of insecurity or self-worth into his projection of love, that was all that mattered. for arcturus could live a life where he loved wraen, and be happy in his love -- with no hard feelings.