WMMAP - [S2] Shelter You

24: Let Me Go, My Love, Let Me Rest

"What if... I really am a different person? What if I am not the one you know?" He asked quietly as he closed his eyes, "Would you still... Love me?"

"If only, had you not committed those hideous crimes, my love," she answered after what seemed like centuries, "Yet... I cannot stop myself from loving you despite your flaws... Because it was partly my fault for making you the person you are now..."

Rent opened his eyes again in shock, he quickly turned around.

Each time he thought of her face, it looked a little different.

Sometimes, she wore a gown some days, and others, a simple work frock, and on others still, she wore nothing at all. She was never the same, but always the same, never there, but always present. A ghost of the heart Lucas no longer could feel.

"Your... Highness...?"

She smiled at him. A type of smile that cracked through the vessel, exposing the identity of the possessed soul inside.

"Do you remember when you went to get the world tree branch to cure my dad and no matter how hard I tried through the telepathy, I couldn't get to you? Do you know how hard I scream but none of my voice reaches you?" She asked, cupping his cheeks.

An unstoppable nectar of pain poured down his cheeks as his trembling hand slowly but surely reached toward her again and glazed her cheek with the back of his hand. For once in years of wandering like a lost soul, he was, could he finally feel her.

She laughed, blinking the droplets of her own tears away, "I don't have a fever. Don't worry..."

He knew what she was referring to.

As if that wasn't enough to confirm who she was, she tiptoed and kissed him on the cheek, as she would always do, and Lucas sucked in a trifle cry as he closed his eyes.

"It is you... Your Highness... It really is you..."

He wrapped his arms around her waist, pressing his face to the crook of her neck, weighing them both down. His knees crashed onto the floor, kneeling.

"I was with you this entire time, and my voice finally reached you after hundreds of years of shutting me off, you stupid magician?"

He shook his head, smearing his tears on her shirt. Not in a million years would he bend on her effort to loosen him up with the joke. Not at a time like this

"I couldn't hear you... I really wish I could hear you," he confessed, "I would give Everything just to hear you again... To feel you again..."

"Thank you so much," her voice softened into a whisper within the night. Drawing a circle around his back, she comforted him, "But you gave too much, my love... Don't you realize that?"

"The only thing I realized... After that travel... After that hundreds of years... I realized that... There are many of you in this universe, but if it's not you," he sobbed as he held her tightly, craving for physical touch, "I don't want them..."

She remembered how he was willing to tear down every dimension to bring her back home. Only this time, they had no home to go back to nor a physical form to stay in.

"That's the problem, Lucas... You have to let me go," she said quietly. Like a broken dam, her tears soon started too, painting on his shoulder.

He pulled away and grabbed her by the shoulders, facing her. The desperation on his face. The pain, the anger, the sadness, every bit of emotion engulfed him whole.

"NO! NO! I REFUSE!" He shook his head frantically, "DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD I TRIED TO FIND YOU? DO YOU-"

"I do, my love... I do," she cut him off softly as she held both of his hands, "But you must accept that... I died a long time ago..."