All I Ever Wanted
a/n: Written circa January 2009.
This is a part of a long set of drabbles I've written for a community on livejournal (fe_drabble). This, though, just happens to be my favourite one, and my one of two that have won a week, and I wanted to share a couple of them I really liked.
In regards to the length of this; the word limit for the drabbles on the community each week is 500 words. Hence why it's short. ;)
Leila never expected to die here.
Not outside the Dragon's Gate, having failed at the one thing she'd set her life out to do and always accomplished. She hadn't expected that the water she had been treading ever since she had infiltrated the Black Fang would pull her under and make her drown. She hadn't expected to fail - this was what she, she and Matthew, were good at, born to do and to be. She hadn't expected to be caught so off guard by Ephidel and caught by the shining daggers of the Angel of Death.
No. Leila hadn't expected to die here.
She wasn't stupid. Leila knew she would die someday. No matter how she wished otherwise, she knew it would come. But she'd had distant, unsought out plans for that. She was going to die from natural causes. Not alone outside a cold monument, nobody to grieve her and nobody's hand to hold as she shivered out of fear from the unknown. Leila had decided she was going to spend the rest of her days with Matthew. She'd made silent plans to grow old with him, and to spend her last moments with him.
But she'd never even made it that far, not ever voicing her feelings. She hadn't even managed to respond and agree to Matthew's proposal of meeting his parents. But then, that hadn't mattered. Leila hadn't expected she wouldn't come back from this mission. She'd expected she'd return, and that then she could accept then, after thinking of some witty response back to him, and when he wouldn't slip away from her indecisive nature he so loved. She hadn't expected that their game of cat and mouse could suddenly cut off and end before they'd even reached the finish line.
She knew now that she'd toyed with it for too long. She should have said yes when she'd had the chance... before it had all gone wrong unexpectedly.
Leila had always believed she'd lived every day to its full, but now, she knew she never had. She hadn't appreciated it there and then.
Leila could feel herself drifting, now. Her arms were weighing her down so much they felt weightless - she felt light headed, her vision growing blurry. She could tell she was on the edge of slipping out of consciousness, and that when she went under, she wouldn't be coming back.
So this was it, then. She was going to die.
Alone. Without her love. Without telling him how he felt. Without ever seeing him again.
Leila wasn't one for crying, but she could tell that her eyes were wet through the blurred outlines. She could roughly distinguish the feeling of a tear on her face. The pictures of her mind were so mismatched, and there was only one thing she could remember. A fading smile on a fading face.
She could barely hear her voice as she said and thought her final word.
"Matthew."