Firefly Glen yomblod

This was unfair.

And yet, unfairness had only ever been both their lot. Anselm fidgeted internally, his tear-swept face dark with emotions too conflicting to name.

She shut her eyes and it was all he could do to not reach for her; though they had only ever seemed to be ships passing in the night, and their interactions only ever strained -- as if they were two beasts of two separate magnetic poles -- Anselm had never wanted this for her.

Maybe Etienne could...? Could what? Magically heal her? He recalled with painstaking clarity what Etienne's opinion of the disease happened to be.

How he had given Druid...

This was not the fate his children's mother deserved.

His sorrowed expression lifted, but only furrowed deeper again once he reconstituted the words she'd managed to bring to life, both said and unsaid. Truthfully, he didn't know. There was something wrong with him -- something so deeply corrupt that it sucked others into its greedy orbit, darkening their spirits with its ugly malaise.

And she was just a product of this, now.

He swallowed the gut-wrenching thought that came to him. It was his fault she was sick. His fault Ezra and Gideon's mother was dying. If he had just put away his stupid sense of pride and dragged himself back to Rivenwood -- but no! He'd been too hurt, too furious, too bitterly angry to do what he ought to have done.

And he knew it.

I -- I don't know. He wanted to say so much more, but the words were scraping against his raw throat, unwilling to be knocked loose from their tangle. I'm sorry. For everything. I vish --

He looked to the ground to mask the welling tears breaking ground over his face. I vish you had never met me. You vould be safe. Happy.

And though he didn't say it, most importantly -- alive.