To Be by Her Side
by TamLin
She was in love.
It didn't matter if she didn't remember it. Kain knew what a woman in love looked like. There were glints of unexplained happiness in her eyes at random moments and those same eyes could go sad without a second's warning. She never seemed aware of either whisper into her soul but he saw them. He saw them because there was nothing in all the worlds, as faulty as his memory might be of them, that were as beautiful as her forever eyes and he could watch them under the cover of his helmet without having to let her see his longing.
It tore into him – that he had to hold her at a distance and treat her harshly.
But even if it wasn't for her own good – he still knew. She deserved so much better than him.
In his mind he pictured the man she must love in her hidden heart where even the gods couldn't erase it and he imagined it must be someone that could make her laugh. That would protect her. That made her feel safe and let her be soft and feminine and loved her bruised knuckles.
A man who knew her midnight sighs and the heat of her hands and the way it felt to have her come apart for him.
Sometimes, when the sadness came though, he resented the absent lover her heart refused to give up. Because during those moments he wondered if the lost man ever made her cry.
He wondered how he hadn't found a way to follow her, even to this gods locked place.
Kain would have – if she had been his to cherish and protect. He thought… he might have found a way to follow her even if she wasn't.
She was so beautiful, so pure in her honest affection for her teammates that he couldn't help but follow after her. Lurking in the shadows, watching from a distance, like a skulker, he told himself to stop. And could never bring himself to do so.
She was a hero and she fought with an open-hearted belief that he admired. She was blazing light in his dark world and she drew him out of his shadows again and again. She bolstered his resolve to do the unthinkable when he wanted to waver. She fought to end this war, to stop the cycles with all that she was – how could he do any less?
He could free them – free her – from this prison of battles none of them had volunteered to fight.
Or… he could at least do what was necessary to give them the keys to free themselves.
In her sleep she sighed and shifted and he looked up from where he sat guard. Tomorrow they would find the others and she would tell them what he was doing. He would not stop her. It was too late now to stop the avalanche he had started rolling. They could only go forward. Tomorrow he would watch her share her smile with people other than just himself and he would stop walking by her side because traitors belonged at the back of the group.
Tonight though… tonight he would watch her sleep and know that the arm that slipped out of the bedroll and reached in the night wasn't reaching for him but for the vanished lover her body was used to finding next to it when it slept.
Tomorrow he would see her, determined and bright and sure in her purity as she didn't blink at sacrificing herself to save her friends and to give them a future away from this place.
Tonight… tonight he would listen to her almost silent breaths and watch her hair across the covers and find his abraded heart soothed for the first time that he could remember.
Tonight he would treasure these moments and envy the man she loved without knowing or name.
Tomorrow – tomorrow he would snatch one victory away from that nameless stranger. Because tomorrow –
Tomorrow he would die by her side and her vanished love would never take that triumph or that place away from him.