The apology came two hundred years late. It came cocooned in warm sheets and soft blankets. It came with many a tender kiss pressed to the forehead, the cheek, the nose. He didn't smile at you for once. The sapphire pools that had seen so much and looked at you in so many different ways now looked away in guilt, in pain, before turning to you and saying those two words.
"I'm sorry."
You couldn't help but cry. Silent tears made their way down your cheeks and were kissed lovingly away. His hand molded itself to the contour of your cheek. It was warm, it was reassuring. You took it in your own and looked at it through tears that blurred its image. It was, and is, soft, caring, strong. Calloused. Loving. Warm. You remembered this hand as it was so long ago. Tiny, almost fragile, even. A hand that needed protection, needed guidance. Then later, it tore violently from your grasp, by the power of its massive, newfound strength. You missed that hand. You missed him. It wasn't even about the land, or the money, or the people, or the power. It was about him. You had grown to love him in a way that went beyond brotherly affection, beyond a familial kind of love. You wanted him all to yourself; you wanted yours to be the face he saw before he closed his eyes every night. You wanted to be his, and you wanted him to be yours. And you thought, no, you knew, that he'd never feel the same for you. You hid behind a mask of bitter anger and annoyance at every meeting, every opportunity to see him. You covered your secret, self-proclaimed "wrong" wishes with insults in his direction.
He began asking you places, making you smile and blush in spite of yourself. You could never make him do the same, for it seemed that that specific talent was reserved for him only. You grew softer, less guarded, and you admitted to him your secret, you love.
That was the first time you kissed, after you said those words, spilling them from your lips blushingly. Catching them in his own, he passed them back with a gentle, slow movement against your hesitant mouth.
And not once in those two hundred anxious years did you expect to hear those two words. They echoed in your ears for what seemed like a century, repeating over and over and with every repetition you shed another tear. "I should have never left you…" he said into your hair, pressing his lips to the top of your head. You shook your head.
"No…you would have been miserable," you say, burying your face in the area between his neck and his shoulder. And then, there was that accursed blush heating your face again. "Don't be sorry," you whispered, your voice colored with all the delicacies and details of a British accent.
"Don't tell me what to do," he pouted in mock stubbornness. You smiled, sniffling slightly and wiping the last of your tears with the back of your hand. Without warning, his strong arms went around you and pressed you closely and gently to his broad chest. He was warm and he smelled slightly of hamburgers. You secretly loved that smell. You reached up and wrapped your arms around him in return, inhaling the scent.
You couldn't change the past. You didn't exactly want to, anyway. It was because he left that you realized that you loved him. It was because he left that you could no longer be his brother, but his lover, and that was what you wanted all along.