Meadow

róisín

It was only with the creation of space between them that the dun girl had enough clarity to realize he'd been speaking for sometime, attempting to break through her pain-fueled tirade. Listen to me! His shout had her cringing back from the sound of his voice in shock and chagrin; Iscariot never yelled. Not even when she'd been the worst kind of annoying child that had refused to take no for an answer and had attempted ever more risky stunts.

Iscariot was always the calm one. The kind one. The gentle one.

To be scolded by him now felt both entirely appropriate and so foreign to her at the same time that she was rendered speechless save for the soft sniffles of her misery. If anything, I owe one to you. But he didn't, didn't he see? He wasn't the one that had demanded that she live her life a certain way. That she have a family a certain way. That she risk her life to satisfy his desires. How could he even compare the two things? They were nothing alike in her eyes. Silently, she shook her head in denial but stifled another exasperated sob.

I didn't think the decision through like I should have. Well, she'd agree with him on that point, but didn't he see that it didn't matter? It would have been one thing if she would have come to him as his friend and offered advice or guidance or her thoughts, even if they were unsolicited… but she hadn't. She had all but verbally assaulted him for the sake of her own feelings without once stopping to consider how he really felt. She'd been so distracted by what she thought he should feel that actually asking him had taken a far back burner.

You were always enough for me. Stunned, her mismatched gaze rose to meet his. She wasn't sure what he meant by that, but she knew well enough what he meant by his clarification that she was too much. That was always the problem. She was too much of something, of everything. Too bossy. Too demanding Too wild. Too opinionated. Too sad.

Too much.

What's left of her face crumples, and her ears twist back apprehensively in anticipation of what was surely coming next. She was too much, and he was done trying to rein her in and protect her from herself. Numbly, the girl listens as he continues, her gaze drooping from his familiar face to the dry grass beneath his hooves.

It felt like the first time I could do something for someone else, he says, and she frowns, unseen. Didn't he know how much he had already done for her? From being the protector and friend she needed as a filly to saving her from herself that horrible day on the mountaintop. He had already done so much for her that he refused to acknowledge. Something meaningful, he clarifies and she wilts beneath the realization that he wasn't discounting what had happened between them… he just didn't see those things - the things that had made her life meaningful - as important.

Not important like breeding with Faolain and siring a child he didn't even want.

The mention of her father presses her lips together in another tight frown. Her relationship with Björn was complicated and fraught with the pain of abandonment and betrayal, and she could recall with painful clarity how those feelings had manifested in her younger self. I decided I would just stay away, Iscariot offered, as if that reality would be preferable to having him around. Sure, it might be better for the child rather than having to watch her father leave and return and leave and return without ever knowing if he'd come back for good or not… but did he truly think that was better than not being there at all?

She swallowed thickly and physically bit down on her tongue to temper her impulse to argue back with him. She had resolved to listen, even if listening meant that he was going to dissect her heart chamber by chamber. When momentarily silence stretched between them, she could resist no longer, and with a brief, nervous swallow, she spoke.

"Don't you see? What you did for me was meaningful… at least to me." She said, not quite able to look at him yet in anything more than quick, emphatic glances that slipped away from his before the sight of his sadness could still her tongue. "Maybe - maybe you don't see it that way. But I wouldn't be here without you."

As painful as it was to admit, it was true. She may have stopped herself the day that he'd found her, but she knew that if he hadn't been there for all of the days before, she might not have been so lucky.

"And I don't want you to leave. I never wanted you to leave. I wanted you to be happy… and I thought you would be happy with a family… a real family of your own. Not just a broken woman who has no idea what to do with herself." As much as Róisín wanted that statement to be false, she could not deny that it was still the truth. No amount of sugarcoating would change the fact that a part of her had been broken in those long months without her mother and father. A part of her that she was afraid would never truly be mended. Unwilling to pause for too long or to give him room to protest, she soldiered on with tears that spilled past the restrictive barrier of her lashes to drip slowly down her cheeks.

"I don't know if I can ever give you that. And I don't know... I guess maybe you never wanted it. But you deserve to have a little girl of your own that loves you." Because he did deserve it. More than anyone that Rói had ever met in her life, he deserved that happiness. Because it didn't seem fair to her that her father - with all his flaws - could have as many foals as he wanted, but Iscariot - perfect, kind, gentle, steady - had none that he'd been allowed to raise.

"But it doesn't matter, Iscariot. Not really." Finally, she takes a deep breath in and looks back up at him, her mismatched gaze pleading with him to listen to her last question, more than anything else that she had said. She no longer cared so much if he did or didn't go back. Or if he did or didn't want children of his own. Or if he did or didn't think she was broken. What mattered was that she did not want to be alone. "All I really want is for you to come back to me."

mare . 4 . mutt . dun sabino . 14.3 hh . björn x siobhan . love

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