a circlet of stars
by Verity
She fell asleep inside the ring of stars, her eyes open, her breath warm against her lips. Tears wet her cheeks – she did not know if they were her own or Derek's or if they belonged to something greater than either them. The ground was calm beneath her; she felt as if her mind were slowly emptying, grains of sand in an hourglass tripping over each other to reach the point where they would fall into the unknown.
All there was, in the end, was the grief of losing him, and the serene siren's voice that was Death, a sleep from which she could never hope to awaken...
As the ship left the planet, he thought he heard her voice, he thought...
The planet exploded. He imploded.
Sanity left him and came back again, a serpent's tooth of his own devising. He liked it better when he could not hear his thoughts, or rather, when he could not hear the lack of hers. The silence was unbearable.
Even when the mind-link was shattered, seventeen years of loss and betrayal tearing apart their lives before they met again, he had known she was there. Alive. He had felt the faint fragrance of her in the back of his mind - not her, but the sense of her.
All he had now was the memory of her lips against his, of the delicacy she had when they opened their minds to each other. The subtle imprint of her thoughts, not forceful, just lightly resting at the back of his, where he could find them when he needed her. He had always needed her, he realized bitterly, belatedly.
A sad price to pay for it was that he had never known, until now.
His life at the monastery, when he came there - a kind of penance. He had always been good at doing penance, only lacking in the ability to accept a gift - a disability that he had lived to hate.
God had given them each other, and she had known, she... and she had not lived to hate it. She had died, and she had... loved him? He had never deserved her. He had never deserved such a priceless gift, when he could not accept with grace, could not feel worthy, could not treat her as he wanted. As she deserved.
Maigrey, he thought, alone in his head, deep in the walls of the abbey, I would have given you a circlet of stars for a crown, I would have given you the Starfire throne, I would have...
And she would never have taken it. Never.
He was always the traitor in these thoughts, as he had always been, conveniently forgetting the darkness of the starjewel buried in the bleeding flesh of Snaga Ohme's throat.
"Derek!" she cried out, but could not speak.
She watched him suffer, and thought that his penance was far the kinder, far more than hers could ever be.