Work Text:
My dearest Celeste,
This letter will never find you. I know that. Still, I write it as one might whisper to the stars, hoping they remember the shape of a voice long after it has gone quiet.
We have crossed into a land swallowed by Shar’s darkness, where even memory seems to rot at the edges. Light is not merely absent here—it is denied, devoured. Every tree stands like a hushed prayer gone unanswered. The stars have turned their faces, and time slips sideways, unmoored. It is a place where hope forgets its name.
And yet—I carry yours with me. That is both blessing and torment.
I carry too much, truth be told. Your voice, your laughter, the way your hand brushed mine once when I handed you the first glass of wine we shared. But more than anything, I carry the memory of your vision.
You showed it to me without words. A glimpse—raw, radiant—of our bodies entwined, of passion unbound and breath caught between disbelief and longing. I have thought of nothing else since. It rises in me like a tide whenever I look at you, threatening to break past the dam I’ve built of caution and consequence. You looked at me in that vision as if I were not doomed. As if I might be a man worthy of that kind of love.
I wanted to kiss you then. I still do, gods help me.
Do you remember the night I cast Dancing Lights just to see your eyes catch them? Four little stars, pale and trembling, hung like wish-lanterns around you. I thought the spell a poor imitation of you—of the way your magic sparks from your skin as if the Weave itself courts you. I’ve studied beauty in all its forms, Celeste. You remain its finest expression.
You make me wish I had more time. That I were not carrying a god’s wound inside me. That I could reach for you without the fear of ash trailing from my fingers.
There is a life I’ve imagined—dangerous, defiant, and impossibly tender. It begins with me choosing you over her. Over fate. Over glory. It ends in a home where our books lie open and our clothes lie scattered, where spells and arguments and kisses share the same breath. In that life, I tell you I love you as easily as I once breathed.
But I am no longer a man unburdened. I have been marked by the divine, twisted into a vessel for sacrifice. And so, if I fall—if I become nothing more than a footnote in this war—let this letter be the truth I never spoke aloud:
I love you.
I have loved you, I think, from the moment I saw you barefoot and wild at Lae’zel’s side.
Play a song for me tonight, will you? Even if I am not there to hear it. Distract me from my task with the chaotic joy of your voice, the way your notes trip and tumble as if laughter had learned to dance. Let the shadows sulk in the corners while you sing something irreverent and wild. I want to believe, just for a moment, that we are not doomed—that there is music still, and wine uncorked, and your head tilted back in laughter somewhere under a less cruel sky.
And if the gods, in their grace, see fit to let me live, then I will tell you this myself. I will take your hand and refuse to let go. I will cast Dancing Lights again just to watch them flicker in your hair, and laugh at how poor a spell it is compared to the miracle of you.
But if not… then at least these words remain.
Yours, even in silence,
Gale