Alchemised

by SenLinYu

Without him, there was just emptiness. Her routines. Hours and days in the hospital that bled together, years of an unending nightmare. Alone. Everyone dead. Because they always died. She tried to save them, but in the end, they always died. Her life was a graveyard.

“Do you have a better solution for us this time, too?” he asked quietly. “After all, not every single horror that I’ve ever imagined has happened to you yet. Losing you and spending fourteen months trying and failing to find you. Finally getting you back, tortured and broken. Keeping you prisoner—the transference—raping you—” His voice was growing raw with grief and rage. He had gone white, that scalding gleaming white. “Is this not enough? There are, undoubtedly, still unexplored depths to the potential misery between us. Shall we endeavour to achieve all of it?”

“It would have killed me. If you’d sent me away and I’d found out later you were discovered because I made you go back for Lila, it would have killed me. I’d do it all again, every second, to save you.” He turned to look at her, shock and rage sweeping across his face. “You didn’t save me,” he said when he was finally capable of speech. “You just put us in hell for two years.” If he’d struck her, it would have hurt less.

“Every time you asked, I promised I was yours. Always. There aren’t any exemptions or expiration dates on always.”

“Is that what you think I’m going to do? Run away and pretend you were a monster I was lucky to escape?” He glanced at her, empty resignation in his face before he looked away again. “It’s the truth.”

“You’re mine,” she said, heart pounding unsteadily against her ribs. “Did you really think I would still hate you once I remembered?” She shook her head. “Even before I did, you were the only thing that ever felt safe. I thought I was going mad, but a part of me always knew you. I left a note. Didn’t you get my note? I love you.” He flinched as if struck and started to shake his head, but she stilled him, forcing him to meet her eyes. “I do,” she said more firmly, her voice shaking with intensity. “I love you. And I always will. Always.”

“I’m sorry—I’m sorry—I’m so sorry for everything I did to you,” he said, his voice hoarse and broken. “I love you. You left, and I’d never told you.”

“I don’t want to choose. I always have to choose, and I never get to choose you. I’m so tired of not getting to choose you.” He looked back at her. “You’re not choosing. You promised me anything I wanted. I want you to stop breaking yourself trying to save me. Go. Live. Tell our daughter I saved you both. That—is what I want.”

“I didn’t make plans past the war because there were never any plans to make. Holdfast, the Eternal Flame, they were never going to win, and I always knew that. Falling for you didn’t change that—it just…it just made knowing worse.”

“Love isn’t as pretty or pure as people like to think. There’s a darkness in it sometimes. Kaine and I go hand in hand. I made him who he is. I knew what that array meant when I saved him. If he’s a monster, then I’m his creator.”