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“Do you regret it?”
My hands firmly clutched the bedsheets underneath me when I spoke these words, trying to calm the sudden nervous energy coursing through my veins. Next to me, the Fool crossed one leg over the other and leaned back into the cushions stacked against the wall.
“Is it time for melancholy again, Fitzy?”
I scoffed. A small grin adorned his face, painfully familiar. It was comforting to hear the old nickname, even if he only used it to mock me. Unfortunately, what I had on my mind was anything but a jest.
“All these years, Fool,” I continued, though I didn’t quite know how to get these confusing emotions out of my mouth. “You told me that you loved me, and I… We both know how I reacted.”
Shame overtook me once again, even after all these years. There were few things in my life I regretted as much as our quarrel. How we had ignored each other, hurt each other. I had deserved it, no doubt. He hadn’t.
“Do you regret it? Do you regret giving me your heart?”
The question that had been burning a hole into my insides for months seemed to have stunned him into silence. His golden eyes wandered upwards to the stars. They were only an illusion, projected there by the walls of the Elderling room. I still didn’t want to risk going outside and being faced with the overwhelming presence of the city in the Skill. But I had no idea why he had insisted on keeping me company, considering he couldn’t actually see the beautiful scene on the ceiling.
A woeful expression painted his features now, and it struck me that he looked the most unguarded he had since his return to me.
“No Fitz, I don’t regret it,” he spoke up, barely above a whisper. But we were alone here, and there was no one else who needed to hear either way.
“I refuse to believe loving someone could be cause for regret. Longing, yes, even torment. And I know I’ve caused you enough of that in return. I’ve kept you alive time and time again, despite knowing what it would cost you. But in the end, I wouldn’t be here, had you not raised me from the dead.”
There was mirth in his eyes at those words, as if he was recalling a joke between old friends and not the most pivotal moment of both our lives.
“But know this, you have owned my heart for much longer. My catalyst. You changed me long before I ever knew what would become of us.”
He paused, and a hint of sorrow tinged his smile. As was the case so often, I felt like I couldn’t quite grasp the meaning behind his words. But I held my tongue, careful not to disturb the most earnest words he had spoken to me in a long time.
“I might sometimes regret the circumstances, the things that have kept us apart. But no, Beloved, I have never regretted giving you my heart,” he admitted and turned his clouded gaze towards me. I felt like a coward when I avoided his eyes.
“But how can you say that? When I’ve never done the same.” Never told you I did, at least.
“Believe me, it has crossed my mind to loathe you for it. But what good would it do? I would rather have your love as a friend than never be loved by you at all.”
I didn’t know how he managed to sound more composed than me. But then again, the Fool had always kept his emotions awfully close to his heart, clinging onto them desperately so that nothing would pour out. Even he couldn’t completely hide the sadness in the infliction of his voice, though.
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” I heard myself say, feeling as if some long-lost part of me was puppeteering my body. Hopefully he was a braver man than me.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for, Fitz. You didn’t do anything. The way you feel is beyond your control.”
Always so willing to make sacrifices at his own expense. Had he ever taken anything for himself?
“What if that is what I’m sorry for? Never doing anything?”
Now I heard his breath hitch, somehow more audible than both our voices.
“Don’t say things you don’t mean, Fitz,” he replied and pulled his knees up to his chin. It was a motion I had seen him do a hundred times as a child. He only did it when he felt like he had to protect himself. I reached for his ungloved hand and cursed myself when he flinched at the sudden touch. Nevertheless, he still allowed me to loosely entwine his fingers with my own.
“I contemplated my life a lot in the past few months. The few good moments, and all the bad ones. Everyone I’ve ever loved is dead or gone. That’s what I told myself. That I’m completely and utterly alone. But that’s not the truth. I haven’t lost you, even though I’ve done you so much wrong. Of the nice memories I have, you are in most of them. Even during the years you weren’t with me, you were never far in my mind. And I’ve started to believe that your presence is the one thing that has kept me afloat all these years.”
The Fool grew increasingly tense next to me.
“Fitz…”
“No, let me continue. Please.”
I wondered where I found the courage to say all those words, as there was no alcohol cursing through my veins. Maybe it was the buzzing of so many long-forgotten lives all around us.
“Do you want to know what I regret? That I’ve always known that I love you, but only now realized that it’s not so different from the way you love me.”
My voice sounded pleading, and it carried my cowardly wish that he would believe me just like that.
“But you love Molly,” he protested weakly, carrying a question I had asked myself countless times before. My heart thumped loudly in my chest when I gave him the truest answer I had.
“You’re right, I do love her. She was my wife, the mother of my children. Nothing changes that. But that love, that loss, doesn’t lessen what love I still have to give. She’s gone, and even before that, she was absent for most of my life. But you have always been with me, two parts of a whole. And I have withheld my love from you for far too long.”
I closed my mouth, as I expected some kind of reaction - acceptance, rejection, anything. But he stayed silent, frozen in place.
“You know, Nighteyes called you pack. Back in the mountains, at the end of our quest to seek Veritas. He already knew what I wasn’t able to see.”
“Did he really?” the Fool questioned, seemingly more moved by the approval of my wolf than any of my other tries to convince him. I nodded, tongue-tied, then belatedly realized he couldn’t see that and squeezed his hand.
“Fitz, I don’t know how to believe you,” he stated, a hopeless laugh caught halfway in his throat. But I knew.
“Then I will tell you as many times as you need to hear it. I love you, in the same way you have always loved me, FitzChivalry.”
As I named him by my own name, his breath stuttered and he tightened his hold around my fingers.
“I mean it. Everything I’ve said,” I ensured him again, feeling more lightheaded and lighthearted than I had in a very long time. He let his free hand wander along my arm, a featherlight touch, yet it burned a trail of fire through my tunic. When he reached my shoulder, he slowly let his head fall onto it.
“Oh Beloved, if this is a dream, don’t wake me. This future is one I have never seen for myself. But I cannot doubt that my heart has always yearned for it,” he said, his voice quivering with what I realized were happiness and unshed tears. I brought my arms up around him, careful not to startle him this time, and suddenly I couldn’t have him close enough. We were clinging onto each other like the embrace was the only thing anchoring us to this world.
I burrowed my head in his hair and blinked away the tears that were threatening to form in my eyes as well. For a moment, I simply let myself feel everything. And tomorrow, I would tell him the same thing I had told him tonight. For as long as it would take for him to believe it. And then I would keep doing it, because he deserved to hear it every day for the rest of our time.
“My Beloved.”