It would have been easier if she had been ugly.
She wasn't, of course. Not a striking beauty but lovely in a subdued and kind way, with melting eyes and a slow, close-lipped smile. No scars, no deformities.
It was difficult to distinguish her from a crowd. Not because she looked like everyone else, but because he would forget what he was looking for, would forget her, and her mild, malleable beauty.
He had seen so many faces.
He had been alive for so many years.
She was a good woman.
(He loathed himself for it, for going to a good woman. Once, he would have wanted passion. As a young man he would have tried for spark, for pride, but now he was old. Now, he was tired.)
Her hands smelled cleanly of soap, and her lap was soft and warm. She was very gentle, and too good to be hurt by him, too peaceful to look upon him with anger or betrayal when he told her, as the baby quickened in her belly, that his son would die long before he would.
She only tilted her head a little, and the breath eased out of her slowly, one hand drifting to lie against her belly, "Well," she said at last, "He still needs a father."
So he stayed, and held her through the night, wide eyes on the ceiling, and wondered if he was a coward to keep her. A young woman. Her future damaged but not destroyed, only blackened further every day he cast his shadow over it.
"How can you love me?" he asked her sleeping face, even less distinguishable as she slept. He shifted, so that his mouth lay against her hairline, and something within him shook to get out, "I was never supposed to have even met you."
Awake now, her arm slid around him, "But obviously you were," she murmured gently, and he could feel her ring digging into his back, the damned thing that claimed her as his, a thing he should never have taken.
His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He ached for her, as a third party does for a victim. "No," he whispered, "I only managed to steal a bit of happiness, is all. I should never have been your destiny, Trisha."
"No man can speculate on the nature of destiny," she replied, and closed her eyes. He listened to her breathing even out as she fell back into sleep, warm and still in his arms.
"But I am not a man."