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Suffocation is quite the fiend, and Xavier knows it all too well.
His heart is no stranger to anguish. In fact, he finds it odd when a full twenty-four hours passes without problems. When there is an absence of danger, dread makes its presence known, and the Mad King relishes most nights with it as a friend.
Tonight is like every other night in Sindersfell. Insults from the undead that quickly grow old (especially at his age), pointless hopes that manifest in false rituals, and longing.
Oh, the longing.
Was it possible for a heart to beat for the same person in every century, millennia, or reincarnation?
Xavier sits on his bed. He doesn’t allow himself to lie down just yet, for the weight of responsibility and memory feel too heavy for such comfort. His crown begins to pierce his head, so he places it on the worn-out nightstand where his favorite books bask in the lamp’s warm light.
He swears he can hear you in the room next to his. Your footsteps, your complaints, your soul that asks him why he never came back to you. He swears he can feel your hands unwrap the cloth of his robes, attempting to find reasons he can never explain. He swears he can see you, not as a tombstone he visited before reigning Philos, but as the woman who definitely made an excellent queen.
“Death to the Mad King!” a Revenant screams, followed by chants of the same kind. Xavier almost wishes the words rang true, for immortality is a curse never to be obtained by those who are blessed enough to retain their humanity.
Almost.
Because he hears his door creak — courtesy of its age — with you behind it.
“Xavier?” Your voice is soft amidst the grumbles and protests, yet it brings the most life to him. He welcomes you into his haven despite its messes, sits you gently beside him, and offers one of his favorite books. After all, you’ve had a knack for Philosian history ever since you witnessed the preparations for the upcoming Pilgrimage Ceremony, and he’s not one to stop his queen from having her fun.
But you shake your head.
“Is anything amiss?” he asks. Carefully, softly, unlike the Mad King he is often condemned as. You have always seen sides of him nobody ever has, even when your memories fail you.
You shake your head again, but it quickly turns into a nod.
“Glory to the Chosen One!” a Revenant screams, and he turns his attention toward you to see just how exhausted you are. The crown you now bear is a fruitless one, for the undead seek what no longer exists: a life beyond the one they were given. And it tires you, wears you out until you remain a queen with no throne to carry her burdens.
Xavier sees it.
He knows it all too well.
And he wants to bear it all for you the way he failed to do back then.
“Come here.” He offers a hand to you, and when you take it with almost no hesitation, it burns. The warmth of you is water for the fire of regret he feels every night, but the memories are an insatiable flame ready to consume him. Immortality is truly a curse, he concludes, and he wonders why so many are so desperate for it.
If it weren’t for you and the breaths you take as you settle your head on his shoulder, he would loathe his eternal life entirely.
“Tired?” he asks. An offering in this night that you have made different with your presence.
You mutter a little “Mhm,” before stealing his blanket and wrapping it around the both of you.
“We will find our way back home!” The Revenants scream and yell and protest. Still loud, still futile. Their home was fueled by corpses who lived their waking hours aching for more than they’re given. If suffocation is a fiend, then greed is the angel that fell from its place in Heaven.
The Mad King could talk to Shadowbind about taking a little stroll to put his sword to good use. He could leave this room and end the screams of foolish hopes and endless damnations. He could bask in the moonlight and wonder just why his heart could still beat amidst the pains of lost time.
And yet, he refuses to, for your little snores ring like music to his ears.
He smiles for the first time in what feels like forever, and for a man who’s been forsaken by the wrath of time over and over again, it honestly could be. He gently wraps the blanket so that the protests, now hidden by pleasant dreams, are muffled.
Xavier hears every word against him, but the Mad King is too madly in love to care.
Glory to the King who does everything for his Queen.