Because this is, in fact, still a writeblr (hard to believe i know!), have a tag game! I was tagged by @oh-no-another-idea, here thanks so much, my dear friend!
“Axtapor, I—”
His head suddenly raised, regaling me with the fierce look in his eyes. “I will find a way. I swear it, Mariel. I will find a way.”
“No, no, perhaps…” The world spun about me once more, “Perhaps this is all we were meant to do— We—”
His lips crashed against mine. “Nay say that. Nay say it. We nay been wrong, ye hear me? We nay been.”
“Axtapor, please, you’re not—” Another kiss. “You’re not listening—”
“Do ye hate me so?” He asked, in the few inches of space between us.
“H-How can you say that?”
“Because this nay been the first time of late ye been tryin’ to send me ‘way.”
My chin quivered and I shook my head. “It’s because I love you that I wish for you to go. I’m afraid you’ll keep losing things and people because of me and you’ll realize, when it’s far too late, that none of it was worth it! That I wasn’t worth it! I can’t let you lose your family. I won’t…”
“Without ye, I nay have one.”
“W-What?”
“It been ye I want as mother of my wee ones. As my wife and woman, well and true. Without ye, I been dismasted…been floatin’, lost. But with ye, gods, with ye, been as if the sun shone on my face! My relations been family ‘nough, but I nay chose ‘em. But I chose ye, and ye been the best thin’ in my sorry life, do ye understand? If’n ye leave me, ye’ll cut my heart out, lass, and I will die. So if’n ye love me, as ye say you do, stay with me. Stay with me, lass, stay with me, because I canno bear to lose ye ‘gain. Cost what it may, I need ye darlin’, I always will!”
I wept as he pulled me into his arms. Every logical, guilt-ridden corner of my mind screamed at me that I had failed again, that I was too weak to undertake what fate placed before me, that I was irresponsible and reckless. But that wounded part in the center of my chest was soothed. How afraid I had been he would let me go…