Disciple(hearts)Signless: Koev halev, Hebrew. Identifying with the suffering of another so closely that one hurts oneself, that one's heart aches
You watch him almost all the time. You always have. His triumphs are your triumphs and his failures are yours as well. Matesprits and more, a love that transcends the quadrants! How the stars will mourn for him, how they will weep for you, when you are both gone. Tales of your love will echo throughout the sweeps, and they will know of your passion if not your name eons from now.
But that will come later. For now, it is grimy work being the love of a mutant heretic. He needs your claws, not your heart, in these perilous days. And if that is all you can give, you will give it gladly.
Some nights the talk of better futures, of dreams of peace and prosperity and an equality no one dares to dream of, doesn't end well. Your love is still a mutant, and his bright blood (the color of hot iron) sometimes doesn't go over well with the low-bloods. They throw stones at him; curse him and his aberrant status, saying things that are as vicious as they are cruel. The words that bruise his heart bruise your own in return.
How can they hate him so much? How can they throw his passion and his vision back in his face? Don't they see how it tears him up inside, when they call him a day-addled fool? When they dismiss his vision of an equal Alternia because of precedent? What is precedent anyway, but a pre-occurring happening? They had to have happened once, and isn't their dream of change possible? Could it not happen too?
You cry for him, at night. You cry for him because he won't. He can't. He smiles still, all sadness and bruised hope, and brushes away your tears. He touches his forehead to yours, and you know in your heart that he is too good for this blasted planet. No one deserves him, not even you. And you cry again because you have been gifted a miracle, simply by being by his side.
When the high-bloods come for him, you fight. Your claws tear, your teeth rend, and though you are barely aware of it you can hear Rosa and Psi doing the same. He never fights though. Doesn't surrender, doesn't resist, merely stands in the middle of the chaos and pleads with you and his mother and his moirail to stop.
Please stop.
Your tears are gone when they string him up on the whipping block. You watch the lash tear bright red streaks across the skin you used to kiss inch by inch, and you howl with rage and pain. Your yowls are only silenced when they crack you across the head, because the trauma they gave you makes you dizzy and nauseous. But still you watch, and you memorize every lash, every mark they give him.
Because one day that will be a debt repaid, and they will wish they had been kinder.
The arrow that kills him rips his first unkind words from his lips. And your vision bleeds red, and you can only think that if you live to avenge him you will be only too glad, because your heart is bleeding. Somehow, you live.
You don't know why you do, because Psi is as good as dead, and Rosa…you have no idea what happened to Rosa. All you have is this bungling executioner, who couldn't even finish his job. You want to kill him, but your beloved's voice stays your hand.
His voice stays your hand for thirty more sweeps, until your hand shakes too much for you to get your revenge. Your heart still bleeds, and you still spend nights screaming at the moon, but soon enough it won't bleed anymore. You will welcome that endless sleep, because the pain of living with a broken heart has become nigh unbearable.
You cry for him, one last time. And though it is in truth Darkleer's hand brushing away your tears in a fit of pale affection, all you feel is the rougher touch of Signless' hand against your cheek.