Life Without Love

[_Stigwig 1510]

LIFE WITHOUT LOVE

 

---

 

Sunlight dances on her face. She turns to look at him, smile radiant and full of joy. It lights up the world. His world. All worlds. It dazzles and blinds, perfect white teeth each beaming with perfect wholesome love. Her cheeks are rosy and gently coloured, her lips pressed together with the gentlest of huffs. Around her hang the dark curls which define the girl, free of any binding. They hang wild, too long for her. He refuses to cut them, loving the beauty and joy and freedom of her unravelled. He looks back at her, sitting so close and yet - too him - too far away, and his heart melts and breaks in two.

 

She turns, and the moment breaks. It shatters in his mind like a glass pane dropped from the heights of the tower in which he dreams fitfully. Light breaks from it as it turns a thousand times over, each memory new and beautiful. She breathes, smiles, offers forth her childish laugh. In the distance he hears a bird calling. Two birds, together now. They sing a beautiful song. Slowly, gently, his sleep calms, and the moment is whole again. 

 

He watches his daughter as she dances in the pure blue river. It is the most beautiful river man has ever seen. It is azure, a deep blue so unlike the greeny depths under which the ocean’s dragons hide their prey. It is bright and shining, like an uncut diamond which blinds a lesser man, and as she dances and bounces droplets fly upwards. Droplets that catch the light, not of the sun which burns above, but instead the light of her simple joy. In this moment she is his without worry, without fear, without the danger of the men who hate and burn and cry with joy when they kill. He knows, in the depths of his heart, that he is one of them yet here with her he is free. 

 

Here he remembers the choice he could have made. Dark-haired boys riding across the plains, whooping to each other with the joy of the race. Falcons soaring in the sky above the dark towers. Frost in the morning, burning and beautiful, soft ice beneath his touch. Here, deep within his memories, he wonders why he ever turned away. One life, his only life, his only chance at feeling and being and loving and joy. One life wasted. Wasted on death and murder.

 

His head turns, grey eyes like polished glass which reflects the gentle clouds rolling over on a summer’s night. He looks at the girl as she leaps and giggles. Her laugh breaks within him, tearing apart his insides, and he weeps to have her here before him. She turns, slowly, head titled and curious. She does not know this pain. She cannot know this pain, and yet she reaches out her hand all the same. The water stills, ebbing away about her ankles. Her dress is marred, perhaps forever. It is sodden and worn, purple bleeding out and grit clinging to her stockings. 

 

She reaches out a hand, stumbling forwards, and brushes at his burning cheeks. He shakes - turning in his fitful screaming terrible sleep - and burns again at her touch. Tears pour again and again, unstopping, like a waterfall which breaks its banks and brings down ruin unheard of.

 

“Papa?” She whispers, the song of her words the most perfect melody which he has ever heard. It wells up again within him. It is sorrow enough to shake mountains, sorrow enough to break the world upon its axis. Yet it is joy at the same time. Her voice alone brings him heady joy, silencing his pain. She whispers to him and it is the most merciful thing he has ever heard in his short, hate filled life.

 

“Hush, Adeline.” He murmurs in response, choking back on his tears. 

 

“We will be fine.”

 

---

 

 

It is night in Helena. It is not the gentle night of summer which lulls in the breeze and whispers him to sleep, promising peace and safety in the palace rooms. It is not the warm, suffocating night of winter which forces sleep and safety in its own anger and warmth. It is night. Night as God imagined it. Night as the artists picture it. It is the night which breathes and hungers on its own, without a thought for others. The night which hides murder and robbery and the soft call of the wolf which hungers for the blood of its own pack. It is night, and it terrifies him.

 

He sits in a chair which he has never sat in before. It is new to him. It smells clean and new. It smells dirty and it reeks of the blood of men. He sits curled in on himself, clutching at his own sides. Before him the fire crackles. Logs sit upon another, precarious, stacked with no care for safety. The fire roars or burns. It fills the room - warm and stuffy. The dark-haired man tugs at his cloak, tugs at his neck and nape and stops himself from choking as the smoke drifts upwards and upwards. He leans forwards, sweat gleaming on his forehead. It sparkles and glitters. He thinks of rivers, flying water, and silent tears begin to fall once more.

 

 In the red-hot fire he sees himself.  Dark hair, curling at the side and matted with sweat. Soft facial hair, covering cracked lips. His coat is black. Blacker than the night that surrounds him, and within it he sweats. On it lays a scarf of august purple. Purple he has never deserved. Last of all, as he looks within the burning crackling screaming logs, he sees his eyes. They are cold and grey. Grey like polished glass reflecting nothing but pain and the screams of the trapped man, marked for death. He draws back, slowly, as breath rattles within his chest. His eyes flickered close. The scream dies in his throat, settles again like a serpent in his lungs. It laughs at him. They all do.

 

He sits as the fire grows and leaps and rises and dies. He sits as the night fades, the darkness fading and bleeding across the sky. There in the distance is orange. It is the burnt orange of the ochre rooves he saw once. It is the burning orange of the world being born. Life emerges. He breathes in fitfully, starting awake. The fire is dead. Embers dance in the grate as he kicks at the bone-white ash. He laughs, for he has never seen a bone as white as this. Only one bloody and wrenched from a man’s body. Bloody as she must have been. He forces himself from the chair, throwing off the sweat-damp coat, and breathes in and out. In and out. It rushes in, yet fades so quickly.

 

The night has faded, and he lives still. It is a small mercy, to see Julia’s face again. He must. It is the fire which drives his whole being, the reason he lives.

 

It is what Adeline would have wanted of him.

 

---

 

 

The courtyard is full of life. John revels in it. Grooms run to and forth, dancing between armed men. Two soldiers stand at the gates, polished helmets reflecting the midday sun, clutching freshly forged swords which rest firmly in their hands. Their glances to each other speak their own language - much of the guard may be green and piss themselves at the first word of the enemy but these two have seen blood before.

 

Half a dozen horses stand in the middle of the yard, majestic and glorious. They are kings amongst their kind, pawing at the dirt and shaking their muzzles. One accepts, magnanimously, a carrot from a young noble-boy and chews at it for a moment. Their enormous eyes gaze out across the courtyard, drinking in the scene of soldiers returning. Atop the lead mount sits a young man, imperious in his own right. 

 

Gold wraps about his forehead, the thinnest of circlets. It speaks of power unrecognised, the natural nobility of a man whose very tone carries forth the demand that his words be obeyed. He wars the same clothes as his father, luxurious purples and the darkest of blacks. He is, even if the word exists no longer, a Horen. Steel hangs at his side, naked and exposed to the air, yet if anything it detracts from the imperial image. An Emperor does not need a sword to command men; only his words.

 

John beams at the sight, an easy expression which dominates his face. Pride flows through him at the sight of his son so dominant. Even if they hold only a city, and the Sarkozics menace their very borders, he has achieved so much. Here Charles is easy in the world, at peace with destiny. Blonde and frail, a girl clings to his left leg. He leans down and kisses her gentle cheeks, whispering peace to her worried form. She rests, deflates, and embraces him gently. Abroad, his wife and daughter are safe in Pronce. 

 

The man’s mind wanders, as it has done of late. He thinks not of his father, who his sons resemble most closely, but instead of Charles. It was he who he had looked up to as a child - he who had inspired his loyalty. It was to Charles, not his own father Alexander, who his upturned eyes had sworn their undying service to one dark winter night. It was Charles whose instructions he had laboured under against the Marnanites, it was on his words that he had sailed back to this realm to help depose Antonius. This was a scene he could be proud of - his descendants dominant, bestriding the world and judging in matters of life and death.

 

Noise disturbs his revelry. Foul, hateful noise. It breaks through to him, bursting aside his memory of nights long past. His smile fades, turns into the troubled scowl which he wears so often. Hoofbeats sound close by, thundering in his ears, as a boy on a worn roan bursts into the compound. Mud flies into the air, spattering the bottom of Charles’ coat. An errant glob lands on John’s cheek, stinging.

 

He sees none of this. He does not see the messenger boy, his tattered and worn leathers and chapped lips. He does not see the half-dead beast which breathes in and out desperately. He sees only the message clasped in the boy’s forefingers. Of that truly, he sees only one thing. The seal. Her seal. Dragons in flight, slaying and loving. He sees Adeline’s seal and bursts into action, snatching at the letter. Numb fingers brush against the wax once. Twice. Three times. He curses and it snaps, unravelling all at once.

 

He reads, heavy brow furrowed. Time fades as he stares open-mouthed, heart not bursting but simply stopping. He does not feel. He cannot feel.He cannot feel when another takes the letter. He cannot feel the passing of the hours, the rough hands taking him to a seat inside the palace. He cannot feel the dying of the sun as life flees the tempestuous, accursed world. He cannot feel the onset of the night, nor the coat which sticks to his back. He cannot feel his own life, nor the love which had made it whole. He feels nothing but numb, feels only pain.

 

What, after all, is life without love?

 

---

 

 

Smoke billowed through the room. It obscured the precious light, misting his way. It filled his throat and he choked upon the bitter smoke, the murdering smoke. He eats on it, barking as he pushes his way through the room. Bitter steel rests in his right hand, long and lithe. The blade is chipped two-thirds up and the stink of blood wafts towards him. He closes his eyes, wading through the cloying swamp. His boot thuds against something, he does not want to know what thing it is, and he forces himself onwards. Into death.

 

His eyes awake, bright light stinging. Tears stain his cheeks. Two men stand before him, stretching from roof to the floor. They wear the bright colours of the Marnan host, swords ready and thirsty. One laughs a horrible awful demon’s laugh, recognising the would-be King. John slows and halts, breath like a lead weight on his tongue. Fear settles in upon his heart and his hand, staying his action. One man stomps closer, footsteps shaking the world about the trio. The fear tears apart his insides, ripping at his heart and lungs and throat. It races up his throat, ready to take wordless form.

 

It is a fear he has always felt. Always known. It is his closest friend, his only ally. It is the fear which awoke in him the first time he ever raised a stick in the halls of his father’s home; the fear of a boy who has never known how to kill. It is the fear which belongs to a small boy, beaten for his name by bigger ones. It is fear he cannot speak of. It is the fear which has haunted his dreams since he arrived at city. Fear which has grown every day, as the enemy host has grown. The fear of death and feeling death. Fear of killing and being killed. It is - he sees now as he looks between the men - the fear of failure.

 

It is the fear of failing the girl he loves. The child he has always sworn to defend. Not the fear of being slain and the blood leaving his worthless body behind, but the fear of what it might mean for Adeline. He has known fear all his life, but not this fear. Not fear of this kind. Not this magnitude. It was fear he could finally embrace. Fear worth fearing. It settled over his body like a glove, scream dying from his throat. It was fear for the beacon which blazed brightest in his life, fear for the thing which made his dreams worth living for. Worth dying for.

 

The men were close now. He could feel their warm breath on his skin as he looked up at the pair. Smell the boiled leather and scent of blood and iron, see the sword which inched forwards. He slid backwards, wraith-like, bringing up his own blade to brush aside the footman’s. He breathed in the scent of a burning world. The palace burned as sparks flew between the swords, fire tickling along the beams above them. Blood and rotting flesh filled his nostrils and he laughed.

 

John looked forwards, between the pair. His eyes were like polished glass, reflecting nothing but the grey glimmer of a mad man. He laughed. So loud it shook the walls. So gently it barely brushed the leaves in the trees outside the corridor. The laughter peeled forth along with the man. Dancing, he brushed aside one blade and then another, carried along by the breeze flowing through the corridor. He dug forwards, feeding the fire within him. Fear. Pride. Ambition. Lust. Avarice. Fear. He fed them one by one into the furnace.

 

There, in the corridors of a burning world, he awoke. His blade flashed and a man fell, hamstrung and bleeding. Unable to move. His blade flashed and the next man died, choking in the dust upon his own blood. He laughed, blood dripping from a cut on his cheek. It mixed with the sweat on his upper lip, stinging. Burning. Still he sang and wept, heart leaping.

 

He burst into the sunlight, kicking away the body of a knight who had come to close. Torn steel burst open before his bloody heart. He sang with joy, laughing and weeping all at once. This - he knew - was what it felt to be a dragon. The feeling of dominance and power, of finally feeling strong on a battlefield. Of being able to kill. Yet that was not why he did it. He did all of it for her.

 

Once, he had sung to Adeline as he balanced her on his knee - soothing her tears and bringing laughter to her eyes. Now he killed for her as she watched from above, a trembling girl full of power and promise.

 

---

 

 

To think of Vivienne now was to compare a dying candle to the bonfire which is at its most incandescent. She was all things Adeline was not, all things worse. Blonde where she was brunette. Harsh where she was forgiving. Hating where she was loving. Absent where she was the centre of his world. Perhaps he had grown to live with her, but only because she had granted him the gift which made his life complete.

 

He still lived the day. Even now, even as all he could think of was the dream which he had lived in and its shattering. Broken like glass. Even through eyes clouded by pain, blinking back tears, he could see the day.

 

He was a boy. Terrified, alone. One figure on the pulpit, a figure made for his forefather’s ambition. He could feel himself shaking. Silence reigned. Silence of anticipation, silence before the great wellspring of ambition. Not pure silence - not a silence of nothingness - but rather the silence of hush and stilled tongues, slowly waiting for what was assuredly to come. Then, the doors swang open. He did not look back, only forwards. He must do as he was told.

 

The seconds draw into a long minute. The congregation hums gently, a quiet murmur. Too quiet. He shuddered again, eyes drawn to the long ceiling and intricate glass windows. Finally she arrives. His bride. His wife to be. The women he has been taught he will love. Must love.

 

He turned to look at her, lips trembling. Quaking. She was blonde and perfect. Her hair shone like gold. Queen. Her face sang of a thousand ancient promises. He looked for her eyes, almost-blue eyes. They shone under the bright lights. Yet they did not shine for him. They shone past him. He looked over his shoulder, quicker than a serpent. Forbidden look. There he saw all he needed to see. She gazed past him, gazed at Hadrian. Gazed at the boy the courtiers whispered she should have married. Should have loved.

 

He shook then, not with anticipation. Not with nerves. He shook then with rage, barely suppressed. He shook then with hatred boiling under his skin, with a dragon’s fire burning in his chest. He shook, and stilled himself. Then, slowly, turning to face the altar, he swore to never forgive her. Even now he had not. Even when he held her blonde tresses in his fingers and whispered that he loved her. Even when he looked her in the eyes, almost-green now, and whispered that he loved her, in the blackest corner of his heart he wept and laughed and tore his heart asunder.

 

Even then, he had lied. Even now he lied, and now he could not tell her. Could not apologise.

 

---

 

It was the blackest part of the night when John left his quarters. He pulled the cloak over his head and about his body, tattered green glancing off the torchlight which burned in the long, winding, bloody hallways. It was the night which had its own life, the night which hid murderers. Tonight that night hid him. 

 

His cheeks shone red as he reached the stables, trudging through mud and ****. He threw a saddle over the nearest horse, jumping up into its saddle and turning the beast in a round circle. This, at least, he knew. This he could do. There was nothing left for him in this palace which his son inhabited. He could be Prince now. John did not need it, did not want it.

 

The beast trotted its way out of the palace, John on top. All he had left to him for now was memories. Memories that would haunt him.

 

---

 

The light shone. It filled the room, chasing away the dark and filling every nook. It drove back the curtains, sweeping along under the stairs. It burnt through the throne-room, chasing away the rats and rodents which inhabited the broken palace. Rock had burnt through the wall - how did rock burn? - and broken asunder the room. It was not a palace but a warzone.

 

He knelt before the light. It filled his vision, even as he looked down, helmet trapping him. Trapped. His ears rang, buzzing, haunted by the battle which had faded. Blood crusted his glove. Cloying, burning through his skin. Blood he could not brush off. Blood he could never lose. It clung to his fingers, sticky and disgusting.

 

He looked up at the light. Infinite light. Weary light. Joyous. Judging. Forgiving.

 

Adeline smiled, a smile of power and joy and victory. He smiled too, weary and happy. She lived.

 

She lived.

 

“Papa?” She whispered, and his heart burst into song.

 

“Papa?” She whispered, and his heart broke again. He clung to the image of her, watched her slip like sand through his fingers. Watched her break like glass, over and over again. Watched the boy hand him the letter. Feel the letter, the parchment. Even now he could smell the death.

 

Even now he could smell the azure river, the floating flowers. Hear the joy in her laugh and see the rose in her cheeks.

 

Even now he found rest.

 

What is life without love? Living like a puppet with its strings cut- like a man with no heart?

 

It was, he supposed, glancing across the Silversea at the burning stars in the depths of night, a life where he remembered love.

[helldiving 5793]

stigwig...

[Icarnus 1669]

((crying rn

[amyselia 2962]

Laurentina bids farewell to her favorite uncle...

[trinn 5146]

((forgive the messy art i rushed at 1 am))

 

---

“What if I freeze?” Adeline questioned, once, to her father as she prepared to hold court. “What if I do not know what to say?” 

 

“Then you look to me, and you will know that you are of my blood.” He uttered in response, his daughter's words bringing a smile unto his countenance. “And with that knowledge, you will find the courage to continue.”

---

 

In her passing, as her ship began to sank and her hope crushed in it's doom, Adeline wept in guilt. She would leave her father behind without farewell, and the thought of such cursed her mind until the moment of her death.

[squakhawk 14042]

 

very well written holy ****.. 

[Anderssn 1115]

Mister Sniffles sheds a snot.

[osumanduas 1442]

Moved to The Great Library. It shall be sorted into the appropriate category shortly.

 

If you feel this is a mistake, please contact myself or any FM and we'll restore it.