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" How long, could we be a sad song?
'Til we were too far gone to bring back to life,
I gave you all my best me's,
My endless empathy,
And all I did was bleed as I tried to be the greatest soldier "
―HOW AM I meant to react when I've given someone the key to my heart only to have them say the very words that shatter everything within I've been protecting since day one for fear that if I crave far too much attention, those who I love will leave me and I'll be nothing but a hopeless privateer and a bastard of a prince?
I'll be the first to answer that common question.
My more-than-clever solution is to lock myself in my war room and have the two bronze statues by the door―Alyosha and Arkady―keep me company as I stare at the constellations engraved into the table, my chin resting on my interlaced hands, elbows on the rim.
Everything in me screams to run back there and speak with Yi again, ask her to stay, shed all my saintsforsaken responsibilities and just leave with her to Shu Han. Maybe I could get Genya to Tailor me permanently and forget I was ever known as Nikolai Lantsov.
But even as the thoughts ripple through my mind, I know I'll act upon none of them.
The best choice is to let her go and make an active attempt at forgetting her.
And I would do that, the logical option.
If I didn't feel like I've been torn in half, stitched together and then flushed down a toilet.
I don't know when the words came out, I don't know how, only that they rang true to my ears like the musical, clean noise of a triangle. It felt like letting myself go for one time, to not have to worry about the consequences or calculate the outcomes like everything else I've ever done.
It felt right.
For a few moments, at least.
I let out a long puff of air and pour myself more brandy, taking a few greedy sips.
While I wasn't too fond of Mal's phase after him and Alina lost track, it doesn't seem like too bad of an option now. Who would be there to stop me if I were to drown myself in brandy and forget about things for once?
Yi. Even if it was the most agonizingly awkward experience ever, she would still haul my sorry ass out of my bathtub of brandy and give me a lecture about my idiocy.
I may as well just do it now, if only for the sake of having things how they used to be for a few more minutes.
"Well, this is a sorry sight," I hear a voice from the doorway.
