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In another time, another life, you would not have walked away from that long road by my side.
If you had come to me a few months previous, I may have been so engrossed in my grief and vengeance that I would have killed you then and there. If you had come to me a few months after, I may have forgiven you. I may have even let you go.
As it so happens, you come with me instead. I debate permitting you a weapon at first, but settle on letting you use your daggers. You fight by my side. Perhaps I am not the only one of us with a death wish, after all.
Slowly, I learn to trust you. Sometimes, in the midst of battle, I turn around and see you appear from seemingly nowhere; I see the glitter of your dagger’s edge and my heart catches in my throat - it must be for me! - yet time and time again you sink it into the flesh of my enemy. Of our enemy. After a while, I realize I have come to rely on you in battle.
I find you trinkets, bars of gold and silver I know you will like. You never seem quite sure of what to say. You thank me in stories, in ways of allowing me to know you better. I listen, and find you those boots that remind you of home, and those gloves that remind you of your mother. I never quite know why I do it.
It seems I have come to rely on you in more ways than I wish to admit.
In another time, another life, I would have loved you.
We trade words and secrets, our laughter crackling like the flames of the campfire before us, our whispers lost to the night and the woods and the wild. We pass a bottle of wine back and forth, and perhaps it is the drink, or the warmth of the fire, or the yearning in your eyes, but I find myself flushed and fumbling for the right things to say. It would be so easy to lose myself in you.
And yet when I think of touching your skin, all I can see is the skin I touched so long before; and when I think of running my fingers through your golden hair, I can only imagine the soft red locks of the man I loved - still love, and whatever spark that’s ignited between us burns out as quickly as the smoldering embers of the fire. We settle into silence, and there we stay.
There are many unspoken words, many untold stories, and I know that, were I to touch your skin or caress your hair, they would break through with the intensity of a flowing river; you would bathe me in them, but instead I leave you to drown. They are there, stirring beneath the surface, and yet you are unreachable, as if trapped beneath a layer of ice that guilt will not allow me to break.
I do not love you, I tell myself. I could not love you.
If I repeat it enough, I might just believe it.
In another time, another life, I would have made you stay.
I would have begged, would have pleaded for our friendship. I would have enticed you with riches and gifts, with promises of adventure and treasures far away.
You stand above me, your golden hair silhouetted against the rising sun behind you. Taliesen’s blood is fresh on our skin, its scent carried to us on the breeze. I cannot help but think it is so strange to look upwards at you.
“There is a freedom awaiting me that I have never known,” you say. And as I look at you, I see the remnants of hope that flicker in your eyes, eyes that years of servitude have so cruelly dulled, and I wonder how anyone could be so heartless as to keep you caged for all this time.
For that reason, I know what your question will be before it even leaves your lips, and I know what my answer will be before it leaves mine.
“Will you let me go?”
"I wish you would stay. I need your help.” It is the truth, though I hope it does not change your mind. Then, later: “Don’t let me keep you. Go, if you wish.”
A part of me is surprised that you truly leave. I knew this day would come, I tell myself. Ever since our words suffocated in the dying light of the fire, I knew.
Perhaps, if I had broken the ice and allowed the words to flow, we would have melted into each other and I would not be watching you leave. But would that truly be better? You are finally free, and when I search myself I find, curiously, that the sorrow I feel is not so strong as I once feared it would be; that there exists within me, too, a lighter feeling which makes all the rest bearable.
Even so, in your absence there is only one thought that so consistently permeates my mind:
The repetition of a lie does little to change it to the truth, and still I have spent so much of my time trying to convince myself that I did not love you.