Meadow

The dun girl’s grief was a summer storm, and Iscariot stood at its center— feeling the echo of every sob and the sting of every tear down to his bones. Seeing her this distraught, it felt like... like every bad thing that had ever happened to him all at once. It felt like every time he’d disappointed his father, and shrank back into a child beneath the scrutiny of his severe glance. It felt like when he’d nearly drowned, and his throat and lungs had burned for days after. And it felt like all the battles he’d watched Faolain and Rivaini fight, wanting desperately to help them but knowing that he couldn’t. Hurting Roisin... it was all of these things because it made the cream-colored stallion feel so small and helpless and weak that he could barely stand, let alone speak.

But he had to; he had to try. He had to find a way to make things better.

No, Iscariot, I am sorry. "Please, Roi," the perlino spoke, his voice hardly more than a whisper; unheard beneath the flood of his young friend’s remorseful words. Twisting around to touch his lips to her back, he tried again, lifting his voice an octave higher. "Don’t. Roi, shh." But she plunged on, no more affected by his soft placations than a storm by a single blade of grass. —it's not my place to, to tell you h-how to have a family— Stuck in the belief that her apologies were necessary, and blind in her own pain to the way each word was actually hurting him. Because the truth of it was— the truth of it was, plenty of the things she’d said had needed to be spoken. And even the things she’d said that were unfair still opened Iscariot’s eyes to his biggest mistake of all: he’d never stopped to consider how his choice might affect the most significant thing in his life.

God, I'm so sorry Iscariot. "Stop, Roi! Listen to me!" It was the first time he’d ever raised his voice, and even Iscariot was surprised into a beat of silence. Meeting the tear-stained eyes that had lifted to find his— and hating himself for the uncertainty he glimpsed in their depths— he forced himself to continue. "I— you don’t owe me any apologies, Roi. If anything, I owe one to you." Inhaling a shaky breath, the ivory male’s words stuttered briefly into silence. "I’m sorry. You were right. I— I didn’t think the decision through like I should have."

He couldn’t keep watching her expression, even knowing that he’d deserve the anger and accusation he’d already seen once. Tipping his chin down, Iscariot watched the grass sway gently around her fetlocks instead. "See, I— I was never looking to build a family for myself, Roi. You were always more than enough for me. Maybe even too much, sometimes." A single note of laughter punctuated that sentence, fragile and on the brink of breaking into a sob. "But Roi— when Faolain came to me, when she asked— I couldn’t say no to her. To me, it felt like the first time I could do something for someone else. Something meaningful."

A bee hummed past in search of a blossom, and the stallion tracked its progress until it drifted out of sight. "I didn’t want to put another child through what you went through... never knowing when their dad would come back. Wondering if he even cared." His voice hitched, remembering the day he’d first glimpsed the depths of Roisin’s pain. "So I decided that I would just stay away— after all, they won’t need me. Not the way that y— that I thought you did. They have Faolain and Rivaini and all the children of the Ridge. You— you only had me."

Iscariot’s voice broke again there, knowing that he’d taken even that away from his companion. Knowing that he’d hurt her, and that she was still hurting now. "So when you told me I had to go, I— I panicked. I didn’t want to leave you. I still don’t want to leave you.”

His voice fell to a broken whisper. "I— I need you too, Roi. I always have.”