Promises
Choking on the smoke from the cannonfire, he closes his eyes, and remembers how all those years ago a boy with green eyes and a laugh like a firecracker had clasped his hands, and fiercely promised everything to him. "I swear, I will never stop loving you."
It had mattered so much, once. Empires would rise and fall, wars would be forgotten like the flicker of a candle flame, and maybe one day they wouldn't even remember their original names anymore, but they would still have this. They'd have each other. As long as the stars would shine their love would burn, because cliché means nothing to children planning to love forever.
But forever is a long time, and boys with their hearts on their sleeves grow up to be men with stripes and a rifle, and neither of them had thought it would come to this, to him unable to do anything except stand and stare at the man he once loved, a wolf in the smoking wreckage of the home they built together (the home they burnt together) who reaches out a hand towards him and promises "come with me, and we'll set it all to rights".
He almost takes it. He wants to take it, because there's a voice in the back of his head whispering look, he promised, and he was always so good at making promises, wasn't he, the problem was that you never listened-
And then he hesitates, looking at the rubble around them, the places where he can actually see his heart lying shattered on the ground (and wouldn't that be a clever metaphor if only it wasn't true), and he finally understands.
He was good at making promises, fantastic. He would've followed him to the edge of the world on the words of one of those promises, just a simple "it'll be better this way" urging him on. Oh, he's very good at making promises, the problem is with keeping them.
And now he knows, he's free to look at him and see more than the ghost of the boy he once loved, because that isn't fair to either of them. Still, there's so much there that Tolys loves, so much that he could grow to love if he allows himself to adjust to, so much that he knows better than the mountain ranges that swell beneath his chest or the rivers he can feel flowing across his skin, and there's so much that he doesn't understand anymore, but even so-
He doesn't take his hand. It's possible, he knows, for them to step right back into the pattern of their old dance, and he knows that if he only tried a little harder, he could go right back to the person he once was, but he knows almost as soon as it crosses his mind that he can't, that dances fall out of fashion, and even the best loved instrument reaches a point where it is better admired than played. He's a man now, and he has responsibilities that he can't ignore for the sake of a promise and the wedding ring burning a brand against his skin, however much he wants to (needs to, in some forgotten overgrown corner of his heart). He says so, and sees the last faint traces of the boy with stars in his eyes from so long ago be swept away with the boy in front of him, because he doesn't quite think Feliks ever did grow up, not really.
"You'll regret this," he warns, almost by rote despite the confusion in his eyes and the ashes on his cheeks streaked with something that might be sweat and might be tears, and either way Tolys frankly doesn't care to learn. "I promise you, you'll regret this."
"Of course I will," he replies, and watches his former loverpartnerfriend walk away, through the smoke that is still curling up through his capital.
Tolys closes his eyes, and he is just so tired.
A/n: Written for bonny-and-blythe writing contest, and Rainbow It Up In Here on Caesar's Palace. If you liked it, go read Wolf and Phoenix by Hintorohime, which is the same idea but better.