Set a few weeks after the battle at Basgiath
Xaden's POV
Usually when I wake up in the morning, I'm met with Violet still sleeping peacefully and on the rare occasion, snoring softly. In the last few weeks however that has't been the case at all and this morning is no different. Her side of the bed is ice cold as if she has already been up and gone for hours at this point. I sit up with a start thinking I may need to run after her like I have a few times now.
I've caught her sitting on the parapet, the roof of Basgiath, in the middle of the flying fields in the pouring rain. Really just anywhere quiet where she can think and try to distract herself from the pain of losing her mother. If I've said it once I know that I have said it a thousand times, I will not mourn the loss of General Lilith Sorrengail. But Violet, my Violet. Gods, I've never seen her like this. The pain and anguish she's feeling. It reminds me of my own when I lost my father, and it is in only that way that I can relate to the absolute emotional agony that I know she must be enduring right now. There hasn't been anything that anyone has done yet to console her. Not Ridoc or Rhiannon. Not Mira or Brennan, nor Tairn or Andarna and most defeating of all, not me. If this is what dying slowly feels like, I would rather someone just ending the suffering now. The only difference is that today, I didn't have to go very far to find her.
I look toward the window at the foot of the bed and see her sitting in the window sill. Back against the wall and her knees pulled in tightly against her chest. With her arms wrapped around her legs and the side of her head laying on tops of her overly bent knees. Her hair hangs loose and blows in the light breeze coming from the open window. I get up and stretch but she doesn't move from her position. That's odd. Normally she would at the very least turn her head to look at me with a weak smile before turning her gaze back to whatever she had been concentrating on prior to that.
I slide into some comfortable clothing and walk toward her sagging form in the window. She still doesn't move an inch as I make my way across the room, closer and closer to her. When I finally reach the window and place my hand on her upper back I realize why she hadn't moved this entire time.
She was sleeping. Sweet little Violence was sleeping in the window. Maybe this was the only place she could think of to find peace from her racing and abusive thoughts and emotions on a night like last. With hurricane like winds and hail pounding the stones of the buildings surrounding us like we were once again under attack. It wasn't safe for her to be out there like that.
I gently pick up her sleeping form to carry her back to bed. Gods only know what time she actually fell asleep or better yet what time her nightmares woke her up last night. I hear her whimper slightly as I place her into our bed and begin to pull the blankets over her. That's when I notice just how hard she's shivering. It's enough to make the entire bed rattle if it continued for much longer. I run to the armoire to grab another blanket before I climb back into bed behind her. The intense shaking rattles me to my very core as I wrap my arms around her to provide as much extra warmth as I possibly can and soon enough her shivering ceases. She rolls my direction and I finally catch a glimpse of her face. It looks so much different than it had just a few short weeks ago. Her eyes an unnatural combination of red rimmed, sunken in and deeply darkened as a result of her crying, and lack of sleep. The palor of her skin an unnatural tone, almost seeming to be of blueish hues in these early dawn hours of light. She looks like a shell of the woman that she was the first time I had laid my eyes on her crossing the parapet on conscription day almost 2 years ago.
As she begins to settle into the most peaceful sleep I have seen in quite some time, I heard her sniffle and then cough a few times. Shit. As if it could get much worse, now she's getting sick.....
Somewhere between her lack of sleep, her protesting the mere existence of food in front of her and all of these past nights out in the cold and rain just trying to come to grips with her new reality, she forget to take into consideration the one thing that is supposed to matter the most, Her health.
