Note: Major Character Death, loss.
Already published on my Tumblr.
Kingdom Come
They ride for days under the sun and in the cold of the night, sleeping on the saddles, lull by the horses' cadent motion, while the animals wander around by their own will.
When the first town come to the horizon, flickering into the heat, they merely exchange a glance: they know what has to be done.
They buy the furthest land with a lonely house falling to pieces; they fix it and make it their home.
The townspeople call them the mute couple, and in fact, they are.
Jon never speaks much. Madelaine only stares at him with her pale blue eyes, never asking anything.
Jon doesn't want to marry her, despite the rumors spreading in town; he loves her like a daughter, like a sister, someone to protect; only to his eyes, however, because Madelaine does not need protection.
She sleeps with her gun under the pillow, waking in the middle of the night drenched with her own sweat.
Jon never comforts her.
He watches from the other room and doesn't go back to sleep until she does. The Princess is a dangerous woman. How could she endure such humiliation for so long, without killing anybody, is beyond him.
Sometimes they hate one another; when the silence is so loud that they can only hear each other's pain.
Jon hates her because she can't speak and Madelaine hates him because he can, but never does.
They are never afraid to be killed by the other. They are both selfish, so they keep the other alive just to have another human on earth who can share the same pain of deprivation, betrayal, and loneliness.
Years pass and they are still the same.
Jon watches her as she looks at the children playing on Sundays, after Church, from afar. He asks her if she needs anything, but she walks away.
Madelaine doesn't have to explain when she pulls him in her room the same night.
Jon lets her take the lead – he doesn't want to be yet another man who tells her what to do, nor he wants to take advantage of her needs.
They understand each other by now and he wants to give merely what she desires: she is entitled to have some happiness in her life, she'd suffered enough.
He doesn't need to love her like a husband loves his wife. He respects her enough to be willing to provide her every bit of happiness she can have.
They stop their mating the day her stomach starts to grow.
The Princess is pregnant now.
He watches with a concealed pride how she lays in her rocking chair by the fire, a book in her lap. She strokes her ever-so-soft bump with her fingers, thinking he's not looking. Never before she has looked so calm.
He provides everything they need to survive and that brings happiness to him too.
Madelaine does not remind him of his wife, so he doesn't suffer when she doesn't share things with him. Jon assures she's healthy day after day and that's all that matters.
He watches with a broken smile the blankets wrapping his slender figure as she drifts to sleep by the fire, the heavy material flutters under the life kicking from inside of her. Madelaine wakes from it, cradling her swollen stomach, and the scar on her face bends awkwardly to match her timid smile.
The first time Jon hears her voice is when she is giving birth.
She pants and cries out in pain and her grunts are low and full of torment.
He can't call for the doctor for the roads are covered in snow, but he's sure that Madelaine does not want one.
Jon stays by her side praying in silence for the both of them to be safe and sound, his ears filling with her agony as she pushes the life out of her strained body.
He dries her forehead from sweat and wipes off the blood from her thighs.
The total silence that follows frightens him, but then his heart eases when he hears Madeline sighing in awe.
Jon cleans his guns by the fire at night and watches with attentive eyes when the Princess hums to her boy as she feeds him, the child eagerly suckling from her breast to show his impatience to grow.
He calls her boy Moe so that it's not too difficult for her to vocalize a similar sound.
He likes to think he'll inherit both of his parent's strength and will to survive.
But Jon is wrong.
Her boy is born in a winter that is just too harsh.
The Princess hold his small body to her bare breasts until he grows cold.
Jon gave her fleeting happiness for no longer than a week.
They bury him by the closest tree so the shade of its branches would protect the boy's grave from the sun when the spring and the summer would come.
Jon is next.
He falls from a cliff as he tries to hunt for wolves. His horse drags him home, to her.
The Princess wails for him.
Jon can see the tears gathering into her eyes when she realizes it is too late for him to be saved.
She didn't cry when her boy died, but she is crying now because she knows she will be alone.
She has almost forgotten how her baby sounded when he cried for her and now she would forget Jon's voice too like she forgot her own.
Madelaine holds the gun to her chin as she stares at the two wooden crosses in front of her. No sound would compensate for her loss, now.
She wishes only for her world to fall completely silent again.