Don't Leave, Never Leave
Summary - She'd forgotten how to breathe without him. She'd stopped trying to remember.
Disclaimer - I do not own Reign, any of the characters, or anything involved with the fandom. No claim intended.
He sent her away.
She should have known. Should've seen it coming. She's always believed that if something seems to good to be true, it isn't going to last much longer, because nothing good ever lasts in a world like theirs. Even Queen's are forbidden of true happiness - what chance did she have? It was only fitting that threats and fear was all that it took to take him away from her.
When she had kissed him goodbye, she pretended to herself and to him that she was alright with it; that she understood why he had to send her away from him, but she didn't. She was a liar. She knew that they could get through anything together - even Queen Catherine - because he had proven it from the second that they first laid eyes on each other.
During the months that she had spent by Nostradamus' side, he taught her not to fear the notion of being pulled in by the Darkness, because he would always pull her back towards him. He had managed to restore a little part of her soul that had been stolen in the caves - and that, that was proof that he could get her through anything.
And even as she made her departure from French Court, she still felt safe from the nightmares.
But what she didn't take into account was how being apart from Nostradamus could draw her into an all new type of darkness.
(Sickly, inescapable dysthymia. Surely a fate worse than death itself.)
.
.
.
When she sleeps at night, she is no longer comforted by the warmth that Nostradamus always exuded onto her as he lay on his side of their bed. She can no longer rest her head atop of his chest and feel his heartbeat pulse underneath her splayed fingertips. She can no longer press her lips into his when the morning light spills in through the windows.
She's alone, with no heat, no safety and no light, and she wonders if he manages to sleep without her next to him because she certainly cannot win that battle. She finds it funny how she didn't realise just how important his presence was until it went away. Finds it funny how it took letting go to realise how desperately she wanted to hold on.
Although he is no longer there, he's still in her dreams, replacing the nightmares of blood and razor-sharp teeth and death and darkness, and he's in her mind always.
.
.
.
As the days grow into weeks, she tries to remember what it was like before him. Before Nostradamus.
Every single day, she tries her hardest to return to how it used to be, but she soon realises something. She realises that her life before him was not something that she ever wanted to return to. Her life before him had been cold and empty and unfulfilling. She could barely face anyone at French Court after her dalliance with King Henry and Catherine de Medici's son. She didn't feel like she belonged in that place, not until Nostradamus had made her feel safe and comfortable in the hallways. Not until he made her feel welcome.
Nostradamus had made her promise to forget him - to live a long, bright life, without him. She thought he was crazy to suggest such a thing to her.
She thought..he must be mad.
He must be out of his mind if he thinks that she could keep him out of hers.
.
.
.
"Do you know what you choose?"
She chose him.
"Then hold on to that choice, because it's your salvation."
She lost him.
.
.
.
Her salvation was gone.
And she'd forgotten how to breathe without him.
She'd stopped trying to remember.