Warning: Character death
This doesn't end here.
Clear water streaks down the statues, heads bowed as they weep tears of bronze that hiss and spit on the parched cobbles of the street.
That's all she can think as it begins to rain.
This isn't supposed to end here.
There is blood gathering at Fenris' lips and he takes one deep breath around the metal in his lungs as though surfacing from somewhere deep. It bubbles red and bright, droplets like the ones that fall from the end of her sword, sluiced away by a rising current.
The present is already passing into history, fading like sunlight behind clouds.
This is not how it ends.
There was once a time when she shed red silk in a bedroom and it fell into puddles on the floor, drained away like blood from a wounded heart. He wore it for a while, her red color. Now he wears it again.
This is not how I wanted this.
When he falls he falls like silk on a carpet, tearing like red cloth in her hands, and she puts his head on her knees, never letting it touch the ground.
One day something might grow here in memory; something like a tree, or maybe a stubborn vine. But today it is only fresh wounds that her body begins to knit. Nothing stays. Everything is washed away, and it doesn't matter how sorry she is, or what she wishes she could have changed.
This is not what I chose.
In another time she watches the sun go down without fear, for night means the warmth of his arms and the white fire thrum in her veins.
In another place he passes his callused hands over the swell of her belly and her breasts and marvels at the life they created in blood between them.
In another life they grow old together, complaining kindly of well-won aches, grateful for hard-bought time.
But here the city burns with flames instead of stars, his eyes close, and the hands that touch the ground are empty. Rain slicks her hair and pours down her cheeks and she cannot weep as her blade washes clean and red fades into brown and soaks away into the dirt.
This is not the end.