Title: your eyes look like coming home
Summary: Saf steals through Bitterblue's window one night, only to come to a sudden revelation.
Come back and tell me why
I'm feeling like I've missed you all this time
~Everything Has Changed, Taylor Swift
Sapphire Birch. Lienid but Monsean. From the beginning, he should have known that he would always be in two places.
It was like that with the Lady Queen. Sparks was the girl he wanted, craved; the queen meant only hurt and bitterness. But with time he reconciled the two, learned to love them as a whole, as one: Bitterblue.
Even then, he would not stay. The Dells and their adventure—and possible danger—called to him like a bird's song. He wanted to take flight, to see the world beyond Bitterblue City, beyond Monsea. And when he did reach the Dells, the mountains and the emerald valleys, the monsters in all their blazing, colored glory, he found himself thinking of gray streets and the mirror-water under Winged Bridge.
It was no surprise, then, when he snuck through Bitterblue's window the second night of his return to the city. He had sent a dream ahead, one of him running across the rooftops, the turrets of the castle coming into view, and when he arrived Bitterblue was already up, waiting.
Her eyes hit him like a punch to the gut. Gray, long lashes, but it was the look in them—disbelief, but also hope, and, dare he say it, happiness. They were eyes he could see himself coming home to, greeting after a long day at work or a long journey away, and that was when he knew.
Bitterblue had waited for him. Some portion of her heart belonged to him, as his did to hers, but now he saw that it couldn't possibly work.
Sapphire Birch. Monsean but Lienid. He had always been in two places, but a queen—a queen should belong only to her people. He might have been a thief, but he wasn't selfish, and this was one thing he knew—with a devastating but resigned surety—he could not take.
"Sparks—Lady Queen—" the words tumbled out of his throat, became twisted in his tongue, and Saf, who had always prided himself on his wit, found himself disoriented. "I...I came to say…"
Hello, I'm back. Don't look at me like that, with those eyes, because I'll stay, you know. I'll kiss you and hold you and never let you go. Sparks—Lady Queen—Bitterblue—can't you see what a mess I am? What a mess this is?
"…goodbye. For good this time."