Trust

They had provided themselves enough distance to separate themselves from the god they agitated, their path leading them to the woodlands. Alistair walked silently even when Ashetta apologized. How many apologies had he heard before? How many times had he awoken to the same ordeal?

"Part of what kept us together was my profound trust in you Ashetta...trust to look past who you were, because I believed the good in you could be saved. I believed I could have saved you from the darkness...perhaps it was selfish to think so, perhaps my pride blinded me from what others saw, what you kept revealing to me."

His hand rested against a tree as he shook his head. "I was a fool...a hopeless optimistic...when in reality not everyone wants to be saved. You shared your body, your heart, your soul...and I shared mine with you...I figured that to be enough. Enough to bring you peace, to bring you purpose...but the truth is it was never enough, it was just good enough for that time."

He turned and looked to Ashetta "I trusted you...I believed in you...I loved you more than anything in this world. I would have followed you through hellfire, if you had just allowed me to do so. You say you're sorry but you'll only continue this pattern, we both know this...I will not be made a fool, not anymore."

Alistair reached and removed his rings, both of them. "You don't want happiness Ashetta, you don't want me...you are incapable of such things. Only pain drives you, pain and anger, and misery are the trinity...your truest loves, and your heart, soul, and body belong to them. Not me, perhaps they always did."

He would walk over and place them in her hands. "I won't let you hurt me, you won't break me...all this time believing you were protecting me, you never stopped to see you were doing the opposite. I won't be broken, never again...not even by you. You go on, live the life you always desired. You're free."

With that Alistair turned and began walking away. His breath was steady, his words eerily calm and resolute, though his heart burned nearly through his chest. He was a man exhausted, and worn beyond his means. He was resolute that it was not he who gave up on her, but she who gave up on him.

His eyes closed as he widened their distance. It was the most painful decision he had ever made...but one he felt he needed to, because it would only lead to darker roads...he wanted to preserve what good he still saw in her while it was still there, before Ashetta further tarnished herself.

Had she spoken in protest it would do little to break his momentum, he knew it would be merely instinctual, he knew the path she was forging for herself...and he didn't stand a chance against it. It was simply...better this way, he convinced himself. Yes...better this way.

Alistair had not spoken a word to her after her apology. Not a word. She followed after him, her heart a heavy thudding in her chest. She had messed up before. Too many times. She had made him angry before, left him afraid for her life.. But this felt different. Painfully, terrifyingly different. Alistair was so calm as he steadily lead them away from the temple, away from the god they’d angered with the rift she’d put between them. Her electric eyes were wide upon his back, watching his every move, gently feeling him down the bond but.. Gods he was so distant, and she felt those anxious prickles up her spine. He finally stopped at the woodlands, and she paused before him, her eyes wary and… not in all her life had she thought she could feel lashes worse than those that had split open her back. She didn’t know what to focus on, what to absorb first, but with every word… every fucking word.. She knew something in her was breaking further than it had before. Even if her voice had not entirely abandoned her… what could she say? ”I believed I could have saved you from the darkness...perhaps it was selfish to think so …” She shuddered, and as hard as she had worked to keep herself from crying before.. Where were her tears now? She felt them, the pain in her throat, the raw sundering in her chest, but her eyes were dry. As if some part of her knew that tears were useless. ’I think I’d like a habitually selfish Alistair,’ she said to him once, that day in Mariella’s kitchen. After he’d kissed her. After she gave him a way out, told him he should leave, that she would bring him nothing but pain and he’d chosen to stay anyways. To be selfish, he’d said. She’d been right all along, hadn’t she? ”I loved you more than anything in this world.” Loved. Not love. Loved. The blood drained from her face, her heart racing so fast that she stopped feeling it as he went on. He didn’t mean… he couldn’t mean.. ”I will not be made a fool, not anymore.” ”Alistair,” was all she could whisper as his hand reached for his ring. No. No, no, no, no, no - The bond vanished. It was with horror that she watched him slip that ring off of his finger. She stopped feeling her cold hands, she didn’t feel the way she started shaking, she didn’t feel anything. Silence cloaked everything, everything in her was smothered with it. Silence. So complete in its absolution that she wondered if the very world had stopped. The bond was gone. Gone, because she had driven it away herself. She felt something when he placed it in her hand, removing hers.. She felt the callouses on his fingers brush the scars of hers, the touch of him jolting through her and then it was gone. ”I won’t let you hurt me.” Ashetta shuddered, but she couldn’t look away from him. She didn’t feel the tears rolling down her cheeks. She couldn’t breathe. Gods, gods she couldn’t breathe. Her eyes darted over his face, searching, desperate. No. She remember those soft lips brushing across her cheek, pressing to her forehead, against her own lips, the taste of him and the smell of him. His fingers in her hair, his smile against her throat, his voice rumbling into her when her head was over his chest. He was backing away from her. ”Please,” she choked out. He didn’t listen to her. He turned away from her, and she lurched forward, her hand reaching for him, for her husband - gods what had she done? What had she done? ”Alistair, please,” she begged in her strangled voice. But he kept walking. It was instinct to reach for the bond, to reach for him with her very soul… but there was nothing there. Nothing. She took a step after him, and her leg nearly buckled. ’What have I done?’ There was no one there to hear her thoughts. No one to answer her. ”Alistair,” came her broken whisper. ”You’re free.” You’re free. There had been a note left for her, once. Smeared with blood, the very same sentiment scrawled upon it. ’Be free.’ As if it were a gift. ”Alistair, I love you,” she said, and she knew she had broken something irreparable in him. In them. She had promised him everything, every part of her, and what had she done? She remembered the way he held her, curled her into his lap as a storm raged outside. She remembered pulling the bodies of his family from those burning buildings. Felicity. Isabella. Harold. How disappointed would they be in her? She remembered the way he kissed her when she was smeared with blood, the things he said to her in the bath. ’You speak of a darkness that follows you,’ he’d said. He saw it now. He saw the twisted thing she was, the only thing she knew and understood how to be. She whispered his name again, as if it would bring him back, so she could crush herself into his arms, against him. She frantically searched for the memory of the last moment he held her. ”Alistair...” "A star amongst earth, you do not soar like your brothers and sisters but you still burn just as bright...if not, brighter. Brighter than any glimmer in the sky..." A lie. It had been a lie that perhaps he hadn’t realized he’d been telling. She was not brighter than any star, she was no light. She was nothing. Nothing. ”I love you,” she pleaded. She knew, somewhere in her mind, that there was no stopping him. That the absolute emptiness in her heart, the fracturing in her chest, that was not going to go away. Something dark and terrible was whispering within her, calling her. You did this you did this you did this. When had she last felt agony like this, the shattering of everything she knew, everything she thought she knew? When she’d found that arrow in her father’s eye. The longer Ashetta was free of the guild, of Master, she began to realize something terrible. She was a plague, she did not know how to be good, to let anyone love her, to allow any room for things like peace or being okay with herself. ”You’re free.” ’Be free.’ Freedom was not a gift to monsters like her, shaped by over a decade of torment and death. It was a curse. Idiot girl. ashetta it's live or die my way.