[You'd live, he should say. You'd heal, you'd endure, you'd survive. He believes it, too, that for all the Princess trembles and threatens to cry, her will could never be broken by the loss of someone like him.
But he doesn't say it, because the truth is that he missed her. Terribly, desperately so, despite all his knowledge that their eventual parting is an inevitability, that she would hasten it along, if only she knew how. He missed her, this strange and wonderful princess who slipped past all of his defenses to make a home in his heart, and though it is the height of foolishness - of selfishness - he is not ready to let her go.]
I'm still here.
[He echoes, softly, his arms shifting around the bulk of the blade at her back to hold her more surely, as though she might vanish like morning dew with the dawn if he doesn't. Most everyone else he knows does.]
I'm not— ... I won't go anywhere. I won't. Not so long as you're here.
[This is not a promise he can keep, not really. But he speaks it with an ardent conviction regardless, the will of one who would challenge the gods themselves to try and take him if they demanded it. It goes against everything that he's learned, that he's accepted over the years as part and parcel of his duties and his destiny, but they all feel so incredibly small in this moment in comparison to his need to hold and comfort the heartbroken woman in his arms.]
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But he doesn't say it, because the truth is that he missed her. Terribly, desperately so, despite all his knowledge that their eventual parting is an inevitability, that she would hasten it along, if only she knew how. He missed her, this strange and wonderful princess who slipped past all of his defenses to make a home in his heart, and though it is the height of foolishness - of selfishness - he is not ready to let her go.]
I'm still here.
[He echoes, softly, his arms shifting around the bulk of the blade at her back to hold her more surely, as though she might vanish like morning dew with the dawn if he doesn't. Most everyone else he knows does.]
I'm not— ... I won't go anywhere. I won't. Not so long as you're here.
[This is not a promise he can keep, not really. But he speaks it with an ardent conviction regardless, the will of one who would challenge the gods themselves to try and take him if they demanded it. It goes against everything that he's learned, that he's accepted over the years as part and parcel of his duties and his destiny, but they all feel so incredibly small in this moment in comparison to his need to hold and comfort the heartbroken woman in his arms.]