I don't think I've ever felt like this. Not truly. Not even with Tailia. My own fucking wife could not evoke such disdain, such hate. Yet this woman did. This fucking woman. Who the fuck is she? Was anything ever real? I doubt it. She made her decision. After everything we shared, after everything that I did, and gave up, for her... She's been messing with my mind since the moment I laid eyes on her at Seaver's. At first, I thought it was unintentional, just a woman with more power than she ever knew, but no. Tonight proved that. Tonight she showed her true fucking colours.
Why? Why would she do something like this? We had argued, fought, broke apart.. And then I found her again. She was ill, talking about how this was Death coming to finally take its due for her discrepancies. And I talked her out of that. "How can love be wrong?". Typical that I find out exactly just how wrong love can really be. I took her to safety. I nursed her back to health, I sat by her side, dutifully, through her fever. And she had the gall to tempt me back to her bed, as she had done so many times before. To whisper sweet nothings into my ear, as she often did, and tell me she loved me. Love? "Love?!" I hate to admit that I had fallen to the temptations of my demons once more. I had been so foolish to, quite literally, fall into love again. Something so pure, and intense, that I hadn't felt since the early days of my marriage, of Tailia. And just as I think things will be okay... She's gone in the morning. I'm left a note on the bedside table. This, and that, about how her love for me was different to that of her love for her Taraborn. That she needed to be alone, that she felt guilty, and she needed to face him and his so infamously exaggerated wrath. That 'perhaps one day our paths might meet again and we may find happiness together'. Bullshit. Simple, heart-sparing bullshit.
She'd left me. Again. After I promised her the world. After I told her I would stand by her side against anything. I was that committed to the woman. A taken woman. Forever the fool, to believe that a girl like that would think anything more of me than a shag. Is that really what people believe my defining characteristic is? That I'm a vessel of meaningless sex, and alcohol? It's true, but, Gods, I used to be so much more. So full of hope, and wonder. A sense of duty. And now I'm a quivering wreck, sat against some stone wall, just outside of little ol' Newharrow, with a knife to my skin. How dare she. How fucking dare she leave me, and go off and play the victim. Run amongst the usual whores of Bree, and tell people that I'm not worth their time. That I wasn't worth her time. I used to think she was something different, something special. And now? She's made it clear she's just like the rest of them. Oh, how I could have ranted and raved for hours. How I could spit venom in her face, and give her all the ammunition in the world to tell her 'special friends' tales of my anger, and deceit. But what's the use of it all? What is the fucking point? I fell for a woman, who had already fallen for something else. And it wasn't her other lover, no. It's attention, isn't it? She loved the attention I gave her, when her lover was absent. And she loved the attention of others, when I was absent. Be it her smug feathered cunt of a friend, who I will most happily beat to a pulp should he ever breathe in my direction, or that bare-armed likely-inbred freak of a man in Bainath. I promised her she was the only woman I cared for, and that wasn't good enough for her. And still, she thinks she has some right to complain when I end up sobbing, in the arms of another woman, like the pathetic excuse of a man I am. Oh, agony.
Agony!
I don't know what it is I'm truly feeling. I don't know if the horrible thoughts of her in my mind are naught but jealous rage because she doesn't love me as I do her. Numb. That's what I feel now. A horrible, silent numbness. The thought of alcohol no longer brings my mouth to salivate, even if my hands won't stop shaking. And the thought of another experience of herbal delights makes me feel sick. Or is it the bloody knife in my arm? Pain. That's what I needed. I'd rather feel pain than nothing at all. And oh, how I deserve it. How I deserve the delicate slices that are slowly beginning to litter my forearm. The sight of blood is almost pleasurable. The burning ooze that ejects out of my system is so calming, so serene. It's something I'd never thought I'd find myself doing, if I'm honest. I'd never found pleasure in pain, 'til now. At least, my own pain. But I deserve it. Truly. I deserve these scars of love. My punishment for being so foolhardy. But even then, to what ends am I meeting? The further the blade sinks into my ink-covered skin, the closer I feel to the sweet embrace of death. But despite this rush, this solace, I know today is not the day I die.
But I desperately wish it was.
I have no further purpose, save for my company. My kin.
For what is a man to do? Such a cruel fate that I am afforded. I seem to have accepted my peculiar luck. Despite my best efforts, immortality beckons upon my name. Of course I will die one day, but I've realized it will never be on my own terms. But I will burn it all to the ground if I am forced to walk this beaten track. Forced to face the cruel reality of life that is Narys. That copper-haired enigma that I was a fool to ever chase after in the first place. As, in the end, where is she now? Sitting, most likely, in that damned inn, flirting with those damned men, waiting for her damned lover to stroll back through that damned door and embrace her into his damned arms... "Fuck!"
Burn it all to the ground.
Why can I still not accept the truth? Why can I not accept that soon enough she'll be in the arms of another man? What is this malicious mind of mine, that spits anger upon any man who even knows her name. She fucking made her choice. "So that's it.", she so easily proclaimed. She made me be the one to walk away. She made me to be the one to walk away. To feel better about herself, no doubt. To have something she can always blacken my name with. How can we ever have played nice after I placed my heart in her hand, and she stabbed it with a knife in her other. She had the choice, and she made it. And that'll never sit right with me. Never.
Fuck! Fuck!
I wish Tailia was here. Even though she didn't care for me, not in the end. Is that who I'm destined to be? Because every experience of love I've ever had: I have either fucked up, or it's been nothing more than a facade. Why is it so hard for someone to love me? And why am I so desperate to be loved? Not by everyone, no. I am too apathetic to care for most people. But perhaps that's what I've been missing this whole time. This sense of purpose I've been so desperately craving for all these years. Silver was right, in a way. That poor girl. If there's one thing I'm going to do, it's track her down before she gives her life up so easily. No one should be reduced to that end. No one. But, of course, an absence of love can do that to a man. The one truly binding force of the world, as much of a trope as it may be, is what I've been missing. What I told Ash was true, after all. I no longer wish to be the man I am supposed to be, in everyone's eyes. That woman knows me, at least. That beautiful woman understands me... And I, her. Something no one has ever seemed to be able to do. Not my wife, not anyone else. No one. Perhaps I'm not as lost as I think. Perhaps-...
"Agh!"
Shit.. No. This isn't good. That burning sensation rattling in my arm isn't good. My head's spinning. My fingers are tingling. What have I done?
Oh, no.
No, no. I can't die. No, please, Eru, I can't die like this. Come on, on your feet, you stupid bastard. Get going! Down the road. Quickly! As quick as your stumbling legs will take you. This road is so long. So winding. The sun is setting. The trail of crimson drops on the cobbles behind me is bringing tears to my eyes. My arm, my hands, they're all covered in blood. No! My vision is fading... But the hedge-walls are in sight.
I need to find someone, anyone.
Before I...
"Before I-..."
