-1The End Of This Chapter. A very short Angsty Murtagh/Eragon ficlet inspired by the Sonata Arctica song by the same name and the song Huomenna by the band Uniklubi.

I have gone against my usual firm principal of sticking to Murtagh Tornac pairing, because for me this song just fitted to Murtagh and Eragon better. Also because I'm not feeling good today, I'm very confused, and thinking about a pair who represent so much to me in terms of emotion is just going to make me feel worse…

Basically, those who know my writing should know me by now; I write angst and pain when I feel angst and pain inside, and I need somewhere to let it out.

Title: The End Of This Chapter

Author: LGL (aka Luisa)

Genre: Romance/Angst/one-shot

Pairing: Murtagh x Eragon

Rating: M - but that's rated really over cautiously, as usual.

Warnings: SPOILERS!! Implied incest slash, though nothing graphic

Summary: A Murtagh 1st POV ficlet taking place after the Burning Plains in which Murtagh gets torn apart by Eragon forgetting everything about their love.

Disclaimer: Characters copyright to C. Paolini, the song title is copyright to Sonata Arctica. I do not know or claim to be the aforementioned parties. I am not making money from this. x

PLEASE R N R

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Tell me it's a lie. Tell me he still cares. Tell me he wants to hold me again. Tell me the pain won't last. Tell me he loves me. Tell me another lie…

Ah, Eragon, I'm bleeding for you now. I'm paying for being foolish enough to love such a false hero, I'm paying for it in blood and bone and tears, and I'll pay more before tomorrow comes. I'm paying for every lie you've told, I'm paying for every moment you held me in your arms and told me you loved me just to throw everything we had ever had away. I'm paying for loving you too much to take your life. I'm paying and you don't even care. If only you could see me, still in the pretence of being a stoical hero, still sustaining the illusion of how noble your little life is, I wonder what you would say? If only you could see me now, would you be able to look in my eyes and tell me all of your lies again? Would you still have it in you, in all your cold stoical heart, to look at me and tell me you have forgotten all about our love? Would you have it in you to watch me bleed for your stupid false pretence?

I want to hate you.

I want with all my heart to hate you for doing this to me, a hate so strong that the word cannot possibly describe it. I want to watch you break, slowly slowly, until you are nothing, I want you to suffer and I want to watch so that you can see what you did to me, and I know deep inside of me that however much you suffer it will not ever be enough for me.

But I can't.

Because I still love you too much.

I'm a mess. I know I am, but I don't care anymore. I don't care if I'm bleeding, because you don't care. You don't care that I can barely breathe without pain because my ribs are broken - for you. You don't care that I've lost so much blood tonight that I'm hardly conscious, to a merciless man who will draw out suffering until I break and then continue on for a while more just for sport and then force me into his will - for you. You don't care that I am shivering because I have been locked in a filthy, frigid dungeon with no blanket for warmth - for you. You don't care that I cannot hear my dragon in my head to comfort me tonight, because he has been wrenched apart from my mind - for you. And if you don't care then I cannot possibly find it in my own heart to care any longer.

I wonder if you could see me now, what would he say? Would you hold me in your arms, like you did so many times, or would you walk away, just turn your back and walk away from me, forgetting everything about the love we once had? Would you stay just for long enough for the uncaring disgust in your eyes to be evident? How could you look in my eyes and tell me that we aren't the same, when I know that once we were so powerfully similar that we were not even two souls any longer, but one united soul, and our love seemed like it was unbreakable. If it were not me here, wishing and wishing for the man I love to hold me and care for me, then perhaps I would see the irony of the knowledge that our love was indeed broken, and it was not by any hand other than yours.

If I die tonight, if I slip into sleep and never wake up, will you mourn for me? Will you cry for me as I cry for you now? I think I want to believe that you would, I want to believe that one day you might wish that we'd only remained longer together. But in my heart, in my heart that you have broken beyond anybody's help, I fear that you wouldn't even care. You wouldn't care in the slightest.

When I saw you, something about you had changed; you look older now, as if you're finally growing to fit the expectations of you. We were born to the same parents and yet we were born so very different. You were born to be this hero, this wonderful hero, and what was I born for? To be a shadow, and wish for nothing else but to have you and to be allowed to love you as I know we once loved, in such a tender beautiful love. You had all of our mother's heart and her radiance, all of our father's courage and power. I have none of that; what did I inherit, save for the same look as the man who would rather kill me than father me, and the same hopeless romantic heart that our mother secretly possessed. I want to hate you for the sake of jealousy. But I simply cannot find it in me to turn hate to you, you my brother, my friend, my lover.

Have you taken another lover, in my absence? Like the master takes his mistress, have you adopted another man or even perhaps a woman in my stead? I wonder if you sit loving them and telling them the lies you wove around me, lies I believed because in my heart I wanted nothing more than to believe in. When you sit there, holding him, for I assume you will have chosen another man, I wonder if you feel the slightest guilt in the knowledge that I played my everything into your hands, I gave you in every trust my heart and my soul and my body.

You used to tell me how you loved me, how you needed me by your side, how you wanted my body next to yours; which I gave to you without even a thought. Can you remember nothing? Can you not remember how it used to feel to make love, and just know that, to the end of this world and into the realms of the next, we had each other, and that that was all we needed or wanted? You always wanted to be allowed to be dominant and I would never let you because I just loved to tease you and to see you smiling, and we were so happy like I cannot remember being happy in the same way save for Tornac. Sometimes I used to think you were my remedy, you were my perfect intoxicating cure taking every last whisper of pain away from my heart so I got to a point of not even thinking of him anymore because I just wanted you.

Can't you remember nights when I couldn't sleep and you held me and told me you loved me, and it was so soft and so caring and so very beautiful that I would feel better just for being with you? Whenever we were scared we would entwine into each other and it would feel so safe and warm to have you wrapped around me like that. Whenever my back became painful you would kiss down it, just like Tornac did so long ago, only unlike him you were never content with just that. We always went further than kissing, because somehow with you there was all of the beauty of love and yet all of the needs and wants of lust.

Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps that is all I ever was to you; lust. And every time you lied to me I accepted it because I wanted to be accepted by you and it seemed my only way.

I take a breath, only one small breath, and feel my body protest. Pain. I give you all of this pain like a sacrifice, a sacrifice I try to make for your love. I would give you tears as well, had I any left, but all tears are long since spent.

I never used to have any tears, but there was no need for them because you always knew when I wanted comfort and you gave it to me. It cuts me up inside to see your mental image now, smiling, offering comfort, and knowing that that is comfort I will never receive. And yet I could never hate you, even for doing this to me. I simply can't hate you, because I still want to love you every minute, I want to love you even with every single breath I manage to take. I want to love you and give everything to you once again.

What if I ran a thousand miles to you just to see you one last time, what if my body was strong enough to make it and to find you again, and my mind was strong enough to break free of the man who holds me and tortures me? Would you be there waiting for me and wrap me up in your arms? Would we make love like we once did, and would all my pain finally fade away under your touch? Or would you turn away from me?

Do you lie so far away and not even think for one moment about how desperately I want you? It used to be than even days were too much spent apart, you told me it hurt you so much it was a physical ache, you would look so sad and forlorn and you would tell me you wanted me. And you had me, Eragon, you had every part of me and I gave it to you so willingly because, fool that I am, I wanted you too. I still want you, and it is my only want in this whole world to have you. I will bleed a thousand nights for you just for one single night together, because I need you so much. It's as if I can hardly breathe without you, I need you so much. I want you in more than lust, more than love, more than life. I want you so much I cannot even begin to know whether it hurts more to bleed or to break my heart for you.

I tried once to kill the pain of wanting you so much. I let myself forget you, I let myself turn to Thorn and spend almost a lifetime dreaming of anything but you. I tried to ease away the hurt, to stop all of this pain, but it only made me bleed more when I saw you again. It tears me up like so many knives just to know you don't love me in the same way I love you anymore, and every time I think I cannot bleed anymore, I find that your love cuts deeper and deeper and I bleed once more.

I didn't know that, the last time we slept beside each other it was our last time. I didn't know that it would be the last time I held you in my arms, holding you so gently because I didn't want to hurt you. I didn't know that it would be the last time we made love, and if I had known any of these things I would have tried to make it so much more perfect. I was so scared of hurting you, of holding you too tightly and hurting your back. You aren't afraid to hurt me now. You whose scars are healed and who's heart has mended.

I haven't mended.

Murtagh and Thorn shall never lose their scars, we aren't as fortunate as you are. Yet still I can't find it to hate you at all. I can only turn hate on myself for letting you go and for not trying harder to get you back for me.

I love you, I want you, I need you. But I know, as I lie here in my solitude that you will never again come to rescue me from my hell, never step in to pick me up as I am falling. And I know that tomorrow I will wake without you and it will cut me up inside. And I know that tomorrow, once again…

I will be sad.

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VERY short, I know, it's barely even of publishable length, but I thought I'd share it with you. I know it's angst but that's what I write best when I feel messed about inside.