transience
"She's alive," says his father. He can see it in the lines upon his face, the glassiness of his blue eyes, every word etched into his expression: don't go. But there's no question. He would go to the ends of the world, swim across oceans or die trying – anything. Anything to get her back.
-x-
"I'm sorry," he tells her. She says it's alright, it wasn't his fault, they were just children. He wants to tell her that they're not children anymore, that they are both far from the innocent youth they once were, but he sees it in her face. He knows. He can see it. He feels it in the way she is talking, her clipped forgiveness and her quietly pitying eyes. The night is dark and he can see her shivering as they walk up the mountain. Everything bursts forth within him like the frozen waterfall breaking with the coming of spring, every word pushing at his tongue, ready to jump forwards as she pauses at a riverbank.
And it breaks his heart when she crosses the river before he can tell her – before he can say another word, she races across the stepping stones to fall in stride with her beloved huntsman.
All those years, those wasted dreams and lost hope, meant nothing at all. And he has to remind himself that she was never his, that she wasn't his to lose. He had lost her long ago; he can still picture it clearly in his mind. She falls off the horse and she reaches out, their hands barely brushing before he and his father race out of the palace and the gate closes. He dreams of her face for nights, her voice filled with a terror he had never heard her know before. He had always been a strong child; he hadn't cried since his mother left. But every night for half a year he wakes up, face wet with tears and her pleas still ringing in his ears.
Save me, she is crying. Save me, William.
She is no longer his to save.