Chapter #60: A Want For Forever
"Lance, look at me. Sssh, eyes on me.
That's it, that's it my love.
I'm here.
Just breathe, Lance."
"Breathe."
Red had always held within itself a beauty Lance admired, from the earliest of mornings when the black of twilight bled into sunrise, to the coming dusk that sets the sloping mountains ablaze.
The fluency of crimson was crisp and sharp, and yet always warm, like rose lips pressed into words of love and spirit songs when day broke into a thousand dreams of blue, violet, purple, indigo.
The red dawn breaks now, shattering like glass between the crystal shards of blue thread that bind Lance's armour to his skin, but not strong enough as he feels pain splintering throughout body, thought, mind; racing as he stares into sunshine-iris eyes.
"Eldar…"
The word falls, frozen, breaking upon the shard that blooms from his heart; like red-petal roses with thorns that bite; as chilling as the icy breath of winter's song. Yet, the pain holds little beauty held by a rose, but still, all of her thorns, as if in cruel mockery of what could be. But harsher. Sharper.
"Eldar," he says, and gasps, and breathes with the desperation of a child drowning, searching for another mouthful of air before the ocean drags him deep beneath the surface, clawing hands stilling, eyes remaining forever open to look upon the glimmering of the veil that wraps around him, to carry him into the after.
He can't breathe.
He can't breathe—
What is this pain that surges through him, like a tide with no name; a grief so strong that it holds a gravity all of its own; as powerful as the dust giants that float in the eternal silence of the void. Calling.
"Lance."
He cannot breathe.
"Lance, look at me. Sssh, eyes on me."
It is not the void that calls. Not yet, at least, when the dawn breaks in fragmented sunlight that flashes and glows in flecks of snowflake gold that dust the fields of sapphire grass, pearling, dancing to a breeze and bending to the rain that brims beneath his eyes.
Lance gasps around the pain that suffocates him, feels his fingers thread themselves to hold, to anchor, to bind himself in this moment so that he can understand why it is that he can't breathe; why it is that the ocean pools around him; red, royal and striking; as sharp as the sword that pierces deeper than any blade before.
"Eldar, El—"
"That's it, that's it my love. I'm here."
The pain grows, the ocean waves falling upon themselves to soak Lance's hands as they tether the distance between himself and Eldar, pulling them closer. Closer still.
"Just breathe, Lance," Eldar says, pushing past the tremble of blushing lips, his words breathy and shallow, as if he fights more than the panic he can feel suffocating his Arenphine's heart; soaring with the urgency of a bird plummeting from the embrace of a warm summer's breeze, falling down, down, to the unforgiving of earth.
His freedom stolen with his wings, Lance falls too, trying to make sense of the blood on his hands, blood smeared between them when Lance's breath hitches and his eyes widen immeasurably as he begins to understand.
"Breathe."
Lance breathes.
Eldar smiles.
And stops.