Chapter Text
THINGS YOU NEVER GOT TO TELL HIM:
I.
The hardest thing you had ever done was to walk out that door. You had never wanted to leave. It was only that you truly thought he didn't want you around anymore, wanted you gone, saw no use for you anymore. And if that was what he truly wished, then you would respect that and go.
II.
After, the guilt ate you alive. You had sworn to him that you would be the one who never abandoned him. But you loved him, and you hurt him; you loved him, and you left him. You were the bodyguard who couldn't do the one thing he was supposed to do, the best friend who couldn't keep his one promise, the man who couldn't keep the prince he loved.
If he had just asked you to stay, you would have run right back to him, back through the tears, through the heartache, through the fights, through the screams; everything in that long thread of sorrow unravelled right back to the start, back to just two kids too young for the world’s tragedy.
III.
It hurt more than anything that the last time you ever spoke to each other was a bitter fight; it hurt more than anything that the last thing he ever said to you was to tell you to leave.
You wish you could redo it all, right from the start. You wish you had never put him on that pedestal. You wish you had never looked at him with eyes that doubted, with words that were even a fraction accusatory. You wish you had been gentler, kinder, steadier; you wish you had known how to hold the broken glass pieces of him, the jagged shards of his soul, and put them back together. If you just had another chance, you would do everything right this time. You would love him wholeheartedly and unconditionally the way he deserved, the way you should have. You would not have walked away. You would have told him exactly what he meant to you. Even if you had to get on your knees and beg him to let you stay, you would have stayed.
You would have done anything, given anything, given up your godhood and your powers and broken both of your arms just to have one more chance to see him again, one last chance to speak to him again.
IV.
Ascending without him felt like a cruel joke that only made you want to smash your fist open on a wall. What use were all the fucking golden palaces in the world without the one face you ached to see again? What use was all the goddamn divinity in the world without the one person whom you would have ascended for? What the fuck was the point of anything without him?
There was no single word for what he was to you. He was your prince, he was your god, he was your almost lover, he was your only friend, your very best friend; he was all and none of that to you; he was everything and more. He was the fucking sun that the axis of your world tilted upon, the very center of your solar system — and what was a planet, wrenched from orbit, supposed to do? How does a planet, wrenched from its path, continue to spin?
V.
Every single time you caught sight of a figure in snow-white robes, you would run with blinding desperation towards that silhouette, only for your heart to be ripped into shreds when the figure turned to reveal a face that was anything but the one you ached for.
You spent all your time in the mortal realm, upturned the three realms in search for him, and would have turned the entire universe upside down if you could. But he was gone, gone somewhere you couldn’t follow, gone somewhere you couldn't reach, somewhere past an impenetrable wall, somewhere past a chasm of fate and mistakes and broken promises — for he was the sun, after all, always the distant, blinding sun too high up in the sky and too far out of reach.
VI.
You will never move on. You will spend every single day out of eight hundred years missing a person who will never speak to you again. You will spend the rest of your immortal lifetime loving a person whom you will never see again.
The truth was that he was irreplaceable, that there was no one like him — you could love a hundred people and it would never be the same because none of them would ever be him.
For how could the sun ever be replaced?
THINGS YOU TOLD HIM:
“I really don’t know, then why have I followed you all this time…”