I'd Run to You

Harper

May you be always heartbreaking
Taking a little more than you give

What is he meant to say to that?

Yes, she had left him. Disappeared like a question mark at the end of a trail of letters after having given up her crown - a whirlwind of events that had already made him deeply concerned for her state of mind. He cannot blame her for her sickness, but part of him resents her for having left without him in the first place. Were they not supposed to be partners? Fiancees, yes, but something stronger than a ring on a finger or a position on a council. She did leave. To find Edmund first, and then again when he came home only to disappear a second time - but why did she feel the need to do it alone when Harper had always seen Edmund as one of his own?

He doesn't want to ask because he knows she'll tell him otherwise; but what was to be believed, her words or her actions?

"I don't know what to say," he settles on instead, voice low and tortured. "I don't know how to navigate this Maeve. How to advocate for myself without seeming like a monster, how to forgive you for something you couldn't control when I don't want to." Despite the bite of his words, his hands never so much as clench as they retreat from her cheek and hand to sit flat on his thighs. Controlled. Perhaps too controlled. "You hated Phoebe for what she did even with her explanation. You told me it was okay not to go back to her, that it was fair for me to have moved on." Lifting his eyes slowly, unreadable, Harper looks into her pale face and doesn't know how to feel anything at all without losing control. "How is this different?" Because he hadn't moved on? With nobody to have taken Maeve's spot, did that make it different? Make it more expected of him to take her back with open arms?

He was just so tired of forgiving people for abandoning him.

I’ll see you all on the other side
After I am a different man with different eyes