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Update: Hello everyone! I'm sorry about the hiatus but I'm afraid I'm going to have to go on hiatus for about a month or so. I'm a uni student, and I've got exams, assignments and presentations coming out of my ears so I just can't handle this at the moment! However, if you've got requests of something you'd like me to write, feel free to leave a review/PM me, I'd be happy to take it! Again, super sorry about the abruptness of this hiatus T.T
Enjoy!
116. Cursive
As he flicked through the letters, a small, handwritten envelope caught his attention and his heart began to thump. It was a hand he hadn't seen in years. Discarding the rest of the pile with barely a thought, he held it between his hands and stared at the slightly yellowed paper.
King Edward Geraldine,
Eblan
It was a pathetic attempt at an address really, but he didn't expect much else from her. He gave out a half-hearted, vaguely bitter chuckle and ran a finger over the delicate letters.
He closed his eyes. He knew that he shouldn't be opening this letter, not now. He knew that it was a foolhardy move to unleash this amount of forcibly ignored emotion that still burned in a forgotten place inside of him, especially at the very start of the day. But he just couldn't help himself. It was just like all those years ago, some kind of indescribable pull that forced him into this.
He carefully slid a finger between the sealed edges of the envelope and opened it carefully.
Edge,
I miss you. I still need you.
Rydia.
It had been perhaps six years since the last time, now. Edge was older, more cynical, and bitter. He didn't know what she'd be like now, if she was still as charming and vivacious, or if she'd grown old and withered in the Feymarch. He knew that he was still in love with her, no matter how she looked. She was the one person that completed his soul, the one person who understood his every feeling, every action, every movement.
He let the letter drop from between his fingers. The paper even smelled of her. He wanted with all his heart to go to her. To leave this kingdom that had used and used him until he was a shell of himself. But there was a bond to his land inside of himself that was just as strong as the bond to her. It was as though if she was the one completing him, this land was the form that he truly was.
He despised it.
This country represented all that he'd wished for, and all he'd had to give up. To make his people happy, he'd sacrificed his happiness. To rebuild their lives, he'd neglected his own. As he watched his subjects marry, prosper, have their own families, he desperately lamented the fact that he had none of his own. After his family had died, there was only one thing he'd truly wanted: Rydia. It was the one thing that he'd never been able to have.
He took up a pen and a fresh sheet of paper, writing out his message with clumsy splashes of ink that betrayed his desperate wish that he could say something - anything - else to her.
It only took a few days of anguished waiting before he got a response from her.
Edge,
I love you. You are all I know I want, too. But it never had to be like this. We never had to be separated. You love your land as I love mine.
Meet me at the Eblanian Cliffs and I'll show you what I mean.
Rydia
Those few lines of cursive had haunted him for weeks on end. Until he finally stole away there under the shadow of night. He had to do this - it was the one act he was prepared to let himself do selfishly.
She was waiting there for him, still dressed in mostly green. She had been facing away from him, the silver moonlight making her hair shine ethereally as it cascaded down her back.
"Rydia."
She turned, and he saw her face. It was different from the one that haunted him at every moment. She looked older, much older than the last time he'd seen her. Her face had somehow become more elegant with age, her features more defined. But her hazel eyes still sparkled with that unique glow that was perhaps due to her magical background, or perhaps due to how very much he loved her.
Her lips pulled into that same half-smile that concealed how happy she really was. But it sat slightly differently on her face now, slightly more cynically. "Edge." Even her voice seemed so much older.
They didn't say anything for a long while. They didn't have to. It was as though every look, every action spoke one thousand words to the other. As though they could discuss something as innocuous as the stars, or the weather with a series of smiles and nods.
"What did you want to show me?"
That cynical smile overtook her lips again. "You aren't tied down here, Edge. Much as I'm not tied to the Feymarch, or Mist."
He frowned at her, and shifted his stature slightly, folding his arms.
"You see, I'm here, aren't I?"
He nodded.
She inhaled deeply, and smiled - properly, this time. "I still feel just as alive."
Edge nodded and looked down, sadly. She scoffed.
"You and I are the same, Edge. That's why we complete each other so well. don't deny me that, at least."
Now was the time for words. "I won't deny you that. But Rydia, I cannot leave. I just can't do that to my country."
"No Edge, you mean you won't try."
"I mean that I feel I'd die if I left."
But it was also true that he'd feel that he'd die if he didn't stay close to her. He hated this more than he'd grown to hate life itself.
"Why don't we just run away?"
"We already did that once."
Rydia nodded. But she couldn't quite meet his eyes.
"I.."
Edge nodded. She didn't even have to say it. He could already read her heart as though it were spelling everything out for him.
"Always."
"Forever."
She stepped forward and kissed him, and it was as though he lost all sense of being for a while. He just existed, completed, and saw what it meant to be truly fulfilled.
And the world stepped back into focus, and the dark night sky pulled all the colour from the world.
She was gone by the time he opened his eyes.
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